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Best of Vim Tips - adulau http://rayninfo.co.uk/vimtips.html ====== BasDirks I find that terse resources like this (and for example Code Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python[1]) are the best learning resources. A true goldmine. [1]: [http://python.net/~goodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/han...](http://python.net/~goodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/handout.html) ~~~ aoe Agreed. But this page could certainly make use of some whitespace, to be more readable. ~~~ ryanbraganza The PDF linked at the bottom is a little more palatable. <http://gav.brokentrain.net/projects/vimtips/vimtips.pdf> ------ ljs This has been my primary means of learning vim. Most of the web resources I've learnt from have been verbose and gradually introduced new ideas (i.e. the advanced bash scripting guide, or any of Steve's rants). I've been hooked on OP for it's terseness and challenging obscurity; which I guess suits the subject matter. ~~~ clay An awesome way to learn new tricks is to hack with another vim user ~~~ bostonvaulter2 Or vim golf if there are no users nearby. ------ dudus I believe this is the worst Vim Tips compilation I have ever seen. Utterly complicated commands with no real life examples. Also doesn't explain the difference between commands, motion commands and selectors. Which are crucial to the starter Vim user. If you are an experienced Vim user, this might be a handy cheat sheet. If you're new to Vim, go look somewhere else. ~~~ mmorey Can you provide a link to something better? As a novice VIM user I can't get enough of these resources. ~~~ telemachos A bunch of things I like, in no particular order. Vimcasts: <http://vimcasts.org/> (And keep your eye out for Drew's forthcoming book: _Practical Vim_.) Vim University: <http://vimuniversity.com/> Coming Home To Vim: <http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/> Efficient Editing With Vim: <http://robertames.com/files/vim-editing.html> Why, oh WHY, do those #?@! nutheads use vi?: <http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi- vim.html> Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi: <http://stackoverflow.com/a/1220118/26702> Vim anti-patterns: <http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/tag/anti-patterns/> ------ ralph This is something to skim and spot bits you didn’t know, leading you to the relevant bit of the fine manual. It has errors though, e.g. /\<\d\d\d\d\> : Search for exactly 4 digit numbers /\D\d\d\d\d\D : Search for exactly 4 digit numbers /\<\d\{4}\> : same thing The middle one is not the same as the other two since \D has to match something unlike the zero-width assertions of \< and \> for beginning and end of word. ------ pg_bot The only thing I have hated about learning vim, is the god awful styling of every resource related to it. Every article or piece of documentation is a big wall o' text with no effort put into styling or separating content. This has surprised me since I don't believe that the set of competent designers and vim users are mutually exclusive. ~~~ gnosis Maybe you haven't seen this: [http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial...](http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html) ~~~ johncoltrane This cheat sheet is horrible. Subjectively and objectively: * Bold fonts everywhere without enough vertical space: bold is for important stuff, not for copy text and the lack of vertical spacing makes the whole thing hard to parse. * Keychars centered vertically instead of placed on a common baseline. * Meanings of keys centered horizontally: considered very hard to read since forever. * No explanation for `WORD`: is it for uppercase words? (yes, I know the answer) * Instead of being logically grouped, the commands and motions are tied to the spatial location of their key: the logic and grammar behind most of Vim is hidden in profit of an opaque, maximalist and almost unreadable mess. * Focus is put on raw memory instead of intelligence and acquiring instant exhaustive knowledge instead of learning naturally. * QWERTY is only one of many keyboard layout standards: a lot of the keys represented here are located elsewhere in french AZERTY or other layouts. This has one important consequence: the physical location of the keys bound to each command/motion is not linked at all to the name of the command or its mnemonic or to anything relevant. Because `A` can be anywhere, learning the physical location of "Append at eol" on this specific keyboard layout or on any other makes no sense at all. But we obviously don't all learn the same way. ~~~ dsrguru This cheat sheet is not "objectively" horrible. If it were, that would mean there can't be any debate about it being horrible. However, there is a debate, which anyone can prove by providing a single counterexample, such as this one: I personally believe the cheat sheet is not horrible. Yay, it's not objectively horrible, QED. I don't mean to single you out. It's just that I find it really frustrating when people state their views as objective fact (and I'm often guilty of this too as I can be very opinionated, but I try to avoid it when I notice), so the above is just my request for us to isolate actual objective fact from opinion and to discuss our opinions using constructive language instead of destructive language. "I don't actually like that because of reasons x, y, and z" does a lot more to foster an exchange of ideas and possibly change someone's view than "Your idea is horrible. Here's why... ." As for the actual cheat sheet, I don't know much about typesetting, but I think the author put the meanings of the keys to the right of the key symbols to make room for the section below the keyboard. Since I use a QWERTY layout, I have no need to scan the key symbols, so this horizontal arrangement of key symbols and then meanings doesn't hinder my ability to visually scan the image for content. I can imagine you're right that this cheat sheet is of less use to non-QWERTY users, but that isn't applicable to me. What's great about this cheat sheet is its division of commands that can be combined with motions and text objects (it calls these commands "operators") and those that don't, also indicating which ones change the mode from normal to insert and which ones don't. It doesn't have an explanation for "WORD" because this isn't a tutorial. This is a cheat sheet. It's great for people who've already taken a tutorial on Vim and are working on developing the muscle memory needed to use Vim proficiently. One quick glance and you now know it was `w' and `W' that went forward a word, and either you remember how each defined word or you look it up in Vim's help. But you know what to look up now. You don't have to leaf through hundreds of lines of text in a tutorial. You look at this cheat sheet for 10 seconds and you realize your tutorial never taught you f and t. You look them up and you're now 10% more efficient with Vim. This cheat sheet shines in its use as a reference (as a "cheat sheet") for refreshing your memory on things that you learned just slightly too long ago to recall easily, and it's also great for filling in the gaps and making sure you learned most of the important Vim keybindings. The cheat sheet doesn't go into text objects, but the same author addresses them here <[http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi-vim.html>](http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi- vim.html>). ------ tambourine_man I don't know how many times I've hit this link from random googling. Just like this sed one liners: <http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/unix/sed.html> ------ ramblerman very nice, what I particularly liked was : d/fred/ :delete until fred y/fred/ :yank until fred c/fred/e : change untill fred I actually prefer this over ctf, dtf as it scales better

Server Side TLS - MrRadar https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS ====== MrRadar For context, Mozilla's TLS server configuration guide has been updated for the first time in 2.5 years.[1] Here's a summary of the major changes: \- TLS 1.3 has been recommended across the board. \- The "Modern" configuration is TLS 1.3-only. \- The "Intermediate" configuration is TLS 1.3 and 1.2-only. \- The "Intermediate" configuration now only uses AEAD ciphersuites with PFS. No more 3DES, CBC, SHA-1, or static RSA key exchange. \- ECDSA certificates (using NIST P-256) are now recommended for the "Intermediate" configuration (in addition to the "Modern" configuration). \- Servers now respect the client's cipher preferences with the "Modern" and "Intermediate" configurations as all enabled ciphers should provide sufficient security. This allows clients without AES hardware acceleration to prefer AES-128 or ChaCha20 over AES-256 and vice-versa. \- The "Old" configuration drops SSLv3 and some uncommon ciphers (CAMELLIA, SEED, DSS). This loses support for IE 6 on Windows XP, bumping the minimum up to IE 8. \- X25519 is now the recommended curve for key exchange (followed by NIST P-256 and P-384). NIST P-521 is no longer recommended as it doesn't provide any major security benefit over the other curves, has less widespread support, and is slower. [1] [https://github.com/mozilla/server-side- tls/issues/178](https://github.com/mozilla/server-side-tls/issues/178)

A better way to rate films - bootload http://blog.goodfil.ms/blog/2011/10/07/a-better-way-to-rate-films/ ====== wvl I really disagree with the premise of this post. Emotional impact (United 93), psychological impact (Black Swan), intellectual demands (Primer) all equate to a lower rewatchability score, since watching the movie takes a lot out of me. However, the more of an impact a movie makes, the _higher_ my opinion of a movie. Because something is light and fluffy doesn't make that movie "better", it just means it's easier to watch. Rating films this way may do a good job of the "so bad it's good" camp (Snakes on a Plane), but will do an incredible disservice to movies like Black Swan. ~~~ glen_goodfilms This is a really important point, and it'll probably justify its own blog post soon, but a quick response would be this: I'd class United 93 and Black Swan as being, sort of, emotionally exhausting. And yes, I'm not going to rush out see them again. But that's very different to saying they're a bad film. I would suggest that, at high levels of quality, low levels of rewatchability makes it actually a better film, in a way. Or, at least, it differentiates them from another terrific film like The King's Speech. If you're the kind of person who likes watching beautifully constructed but largely enjoyable films, your tastes will tend toward the top- right of the graph. But, if you enjoy more difficult or harrowing films, your favourite films might be lower on the rewatchability score, on average. My point is, while quality is quality, a measure of skill and talent, rewatchability is personal, and groups similar films together in interesting ways. Where your favourite films come out on the graph is really not important to anyone but you, when you're looking for more stuff you like. You may still disagree, but thanks for taking the time to comment :) -glen. ~~~ wvl I guess then, it depends on execution. If you're combining both of these numbers into one single metric of "goodness", then you'll just be accomplishing Pahalial's point of "legitimizing 'poor taste'". If, however, you can expose this information separately and well, then perhaps it will add value. Personally, I'd like to break down the "rewatchability" metric into more components, to really get at the heart of the matter, like others here have commented. Pace, quality, fun, emotional impact, length, genre -- these are the things that really matter. But now we're getting into movie geek territory. Speaking of movie geek -- I can't believe you left out the most interesting thing in that blog post. Where can we see a breakdown of what movies are where in that scatter plot? I want to know what those outliers on the high quality / low rewatchability scale are! ~~~ glen_goodfilms Yeah there's no sense in combining them. Or even averaging scores, really. Using a scatter plot you can get quite a good insight into the film at a glance. As for which movies are the outliers, that you'll find out when you're a member :) ~~~ carbocation On your scatterplot, the correlation between the two scores looks incredibly high. By eyeballing it, I'd say > 0.8. Will you give the actual score in your upcoming post? Ideally, it would be nice to find two axes that are orthogonal and let people rate on those. Clearly these two axes are highly correlated. ------ Pahalial This seems useful, yet awfully much like another step on the slow path to legitimizing 'poor taste'. That's a bit harsh, so let me qualify it. I actually rather agree with the division inherent in this and think it will resound with people, but I honestly believe that this is yet another step towards turning our society into idiocracy. It's the slow legitimization of appreciation for content that we acknowledge as garbage but consume anyway. I firmly believe that there is inherent social value in this garbage content remaining quasi-taboo - a social pressure not to like such things. Sure, most people will watch some anyway, or play the latest mindless shooter, or what-have-you, but so long as it's understood that most people will mock you for publicly liking this, the norm does not drift towards mindlessness - you still need to consume some legitimately good content, even if only to have something to talk about. I don't mean to attack the site; I think it's a great way to slice into the recommendations game, and I do think a lot of people will get value out of it, and it seems like it may well succeed. I simply am afraid it's a net negative for our society in the long run (then again, of course, not launching is hardly going to reverse such a trend.) Edit: Make that _symptomatic_ of a net negative. I've thought some more and this is only giving an online portal to express the shift I talk about above, which has already been happening aplenty. ~~~ recursive I think the alternative is people pretending to like things they do not. You can't force people to appreciate your brand of high culture by mocking them for not doing so. At best, the people you're trying to win over will publicly pay lip service. At worst, it will become more difficult for people like you to find things that you think are worthwhile, because the space will become polluted by people who don't get it. Let people like what they like. I, for one, am not ashamed to say that I like stupid things. ------ InclinedPlane It's still broken, just differently (maybe better) broken. Films, music, books, etc. are not about some abstract universal gradation of quality that a large enough, good enough statistical sampling of viewers will reveal with increasing precision. No, they are art. Enjoyment and appreciation of art is a matter of personal taste, which is not, will not, and cannot be universal for everyone. That's why up/down votes are decent enough ratings systems despite their crudeness, all they do is tell people whether or not taking the effort to find out if a piece of art suits your personal taste is likely to be worthwhile. Ultimately what ratings are trying to get at is recommendations. The simplest idea being to measure the average opinion of everyone and present the highest rated works as recommendations. However, more sophisticated systems which try to find people with similar taste and recommend to you things that they seem to like but you haven't been exposed to are likely to be more successful, though significantly more complex to implement. It seems unlikely that even that represents the limit of improvement for the problem, but nobody's done much better yet. ------ seanalltogether I've thought about this problem a lot and I'm glad to see there is a site out there trying to tackle this problem. For me, I always thought about movies in terms of investment with 4 options, "I'd buy it", "I'd rent it", "I'd watch it for free", "I'd avoid it". I think dollars speak louder then opinions. The problem is that nowadays in the world of streaming video, this scale gets completely trashed as the friction to invest in a movie is lowered considerably. I do like the idea of production value vs replay value, I remember when I saw Passion of the Christ I told a friend it was an amazing movie i never want to see again. ------ ComputerGuru I posted this on the site, posting it here too: I would say a better metric would be "How much did you enjoy this film?" vs "How good is this movie?" I've been grappling with this problem since subscribing to Netflix, wondering how I should rate a movie I personally did not enjoy _that I also felt was incredibly well made_. For example, "A Clockwork Orange" is an incredible movie by all means and I would give it 97 stars out of a hundred.... but I hated every single second of it. It's gruesome, sadistic, dark, miserable, and disgusting. But it was undeniably well made. Rewatchability sucks in the aspect because many movies can't be rewatched, while still being both splendidly produced and enjoyable. Let me make this clearer with examples: "The Sixth Sense," "Rear Window," "The Accused," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "12 Angry Men," "Apollo 13..." The list goes on and on. There are great movies that just don't rank so highly because they're SUSPENSEFUL and that suspense doesn't translate will into rewatches. Rewatching suspenseful movies will make them seem boring and long-drawn. Rewatching feel-good movies ("Seven Pounds," "How To Train Your Dragon," "Blind Side," etc.) however, is just as good the second time if not better. tl;dr the rewatchability index will be heavily skewed towards feel-good favorites and epics, and away from dark, gritty, mysterious, and suspenseful. Not a good index. ------ wernercolangelo Discolsure: I am a co-founder for a movie recommendation site called tellmetwin.com so I am biased towards our own rating system... I have never considered the rewatchability criteria as a potential factor in rating a movie, but must admit that is has appeal. But thinking about it further, it is a very personal metric so would not be very useful in determining the overall watchability of a movie. I.e. if you consider a movie rewatchable it might not correlate with me considering it to be watchable. I would love to be able to see a plot of individuals and how their ratings cluster (some interesting visual way of adding and removing individuals would be cool) because I would guess (based on our own data) that these plots would not be uniform. And if they are not, then an individual's movie recommendation, based on rewatchability, would have less value to me. ------ socratic I really want a good movie recommender system. (Which I suppose makes this a good idea to work on.) However, focusing on these sorts of issues seems like exactly the wrong way to go about it. I understand that people overwhelmingly tend towards the extremes of rating scales. But who cares? There's so much noise anyway. Here's what I want: (1) include (all) films and television series and (2) include top 1000 lists for as many niche categories as possible (foreign films about relationships, teen comedy, and so on). I don't even care if it is personalized, because the personalization is always horrible. (I've tried Netflix, Jinni and others and they're all terrible.) Just having the average for the movie is actually amazingly accurate on many measures (within 10--20%). Is there something like this? The closest I've gotten so far is finding a good IMDB user list or two. ~~~ covercash While not exactly what you're looking for, I find myself going back to <http://nanocrowd.com> quite often for movie recommendations. They don't do TV shows, but their niche categories are usually pretty solid. It works well if you can give them an example of the type of movie you feel like watching. For instance, I wanted to watch a cheesy, nerdy, thriller earlier tonight, something along the lines of Hackers and it suggested The Net, Antitrust, TRON, Live Free or Die Hard, The Matrix, Swordfish, etc. Exactly what I was in the mood for. ------ phzbOx Interesting post even though I'd admit that I'm not a huge fan of "I'd watch it again". For instance, some movies are really _hard_ (huge drama, etc.), or particularly long, or even have a huge punch at the end. These movies would have a "rewatchability" really poor. One might also watch a very simple movie.. nothing extraordinary that you wouldn't necessarily watch again; that doesn't mean it's not a good movie to watch for the first time. Personally, I think the best factor to "guess" if I would watch a movie would be to anonymously analyse a huge set of data and find people who like the same stuff as I do. So, he likes x,y,z (as I do) and hate a,b,c as I do, good.. we mostly like the same stuff. Now, he _really_ enjoyed K; I'd probably also like it. ~~~ phzbOx (Note: This is different than what Amazon does with the "People who bought this item also bought these items".) ------ dexy I think rewatchability is a great metric for one thing: whether or not someone is going to want to rewatch something... Just because the data better fits your desired skews, doesn't mean it gets at what the users actually want. I think a major issue at hand is that people often rate things as they expect a critic to rate them. If you would give Transformers 2 a 5-star rewatchability rating, you should be giving it at least 3 or 4 stars for quality, because obviously you enjoyed it very much. Instead, many people pretend to be film critics, whose jobs are very different, and assign an 'objective rating'. A film critic can not give personal opinions because he's supposed to speak for the masses--to appeal to some higher taste he aspires to have and that he hopes society would have. If you loved Transformers, rate it 5 stars--period. The rating isn't meant to be read by others, it's not meant to appeal to an idealized world, it's just how you felt about the thing. Convince your users to rate intelligently with that mindset and you'll start to see good data. All that said, more data is better than less, and if you could convince your users to double their average rating-time investment and give you ratings for both, awesome. I'm skeptical that users would bother to rate two metrics for everything they've seen...but I think it's certainly possible they would. Be interested to see. ------ tellmetwin I like the term "rewatchability" but I don't agree with your logic. Why would you limit your pool of advice-givers to your friends? They are good for service advice where you need someone you can trust to give you the whole and honest story. In movies it's beyond that, it's much more important to find people with the closest match to you in movie taste as possible. The more people the closer taste match you will get (goes without saying). I also don't see the point of giving "quality" scores. I really don't care if a stranger thinks some movie was of high or low quality. I'd much rather know if my taste-twin loved it or hated it. I for example thought Lord of the Rings was super well done and yet super boring. But this opinion of mine only matters to someone who resembles me in movie taste, who hates and loves the same quirky things as I do about movies. And of the two opinions i mentioned (well done, boring) its really only the latter that matters to my twin, he/she should pay most attention to that when deciding if to go and see the Lord, not if I thought the movie was of high or low quality. But having said that, I like "rewatchability" as a concept to study further. I too would rip of my nails before seeing Black Swan again but I still thought it was a masterpiece. However, I have seen Requim for a Dream (Darren's Arrenovsky's previous movie) again and again although it was also very emotionally intense like the Swan. Just in a different way, less depressive, but killer strong in an exhaustive yet positive way. And then.. yet and still.. I would recommend both movies to everyone I meet. I think both are a must see even though one of them I would never want to see again. ------ ph0rque One thing that movie ratings don't take into account, including this one, is: what am I in the mood for? I'd like to type into netflix, "I'm in the mood for James Bond meets Spirited Away", have it perhaps give me a few yes/no choices, and make recommendations based on that. ~~~ socratic This is the main thing Jinni claims to do. Have you tried it? <http://www.jinni.com/> ~~~ daeken I also strongly recommend <http://tastekid.com/> . The recommendations are great, although it tends to give them very narrowly (very similar movies, rather than related movies you might enjoy but are in a different style). The name is also very unfortunate, but I love it. ------ mkolodny I think that "rewatchablility" is an important metric, but it's just one of so many different metrics that people use to judge what a great movie is. As you said, there are plenty of terrific movies for which I wouldn't be upset if I never saw them again. Yet, would I recommend them? Yes. Movies are so wonderfully complex that there is no single metric by which we can judge their credibility. We can only state our opinion of them, and leave the judgement to the next viewer. ------ nostromo Another issue with five star ratings is that visually you would suspect that a 50% rating is 2.5 out of 5 stars. However, the 50% rating is actually 3 stars. This is obvious when you list out your star options: 1,2,3,4,5. 3/5 stars visually appears to be better than 50%, but is actually exactly 50% due to the inability to choose 0 stars. (This seems unresolvable as most people now recognize the image of 5 unfilled stars as null rather than 0%.) ------ pbreit Surprisingly doesn't mention IMDB which has by far the best general purpose ratings. Curious if they considered "Would you watch this movie again? [yes/no]" I also wonder if NetPromoter could be adapted for rating things like movies. It uses the question "Would you recommend..." and has a much harsher formula (+1 for 9/10, -1 for 0-6). ------ jonkelly I definitely liked the personality that came through the writing. "On the other end of the scale, I think Black Swan is a terrific film, but I’d sooner pull my nails out than watch it again." - well said and a good illustration of the value of the dual scale. ------ rickmb This is purely a way to rate movies for entertainment value. Which means although the method may be better, the end result is very likely to barely differ from the current abysmal state of IMDB ratings. ------ cpeterso The graph of film "quality" versus "rewatchability" looks pretty linear to me. Why maintain two rating criteria if data shows they are practically correlated 1:1? ------ billmcneale Any rating system works great if all the ratings come from people with similar tastes as yours. ~~~ tellmetwin spot on bill, in a nutshell.

Auction your time – startup - hirebid http://HireBid.com ====== hirebid We just launched. All feedback welcome.

Paragonie/Libgossamer: Public Key Infrastructure Without Certificate Authorities - andreareina https://github.com/paragonie/libgossamer ====== verdverm CFSSL would be more recommended

Video Recording From Your Mobile Browser - cdanzig http://cameratag.com? Hey guys,<p>Just a quick note to let you know that we just unveiled support for mobile web video recording / uploading. (iOS 6.0+ and Android 2.2+). You can check it out by pointing your mobile browser to CameraTag.com and clicking on the "click here to record" box.<p><i></i> For all you webtech geeks- WebRTC soon to come :)<p>-c ====== cdanzig Hey guys, Just a quick note to let you know that we just unveiled support for mobile web video recording / uploading. (iOS 6.0+ and Android 2.2+). You can check it out by pointing your mobile browser to CameraTag.com and clicking on the "click here to record" box. __For all you webtech geeks- WebRTC soon to come :)

The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder - drewsing http://www.inc.com/salvador-rodriguez/devschool-coding-bootcamps.html ====== Ayraa A lot of the students enrolled hoping to get a job later. The scam aside, this goes to show that too many people still believe in the old system: learn skill in school -> get job. Especially that one student who lamented now he can't prove he completed the lessons from this bootcamp. Would a no name bootcamp impress any employer? Learning in a classroom (or via Slack chats!) is not enough. It's just the first step. The key is applying it as soon as possible by doing projects, for yourself or for someone else. For free in the beginning if need be. Employers now want to see proof you can do something, not a piece of paper showing you can. Plus publishing these projects online can help employers / recruiters discover you. Too many parents are still teaching their kids a paint by the numbers formula they knew for life: go to school -> land job. Work there -> rise through the ranks. The good news is, there's a hundred different ways to land a job now. The bad news is, trying, failing at, trying again at those different ways can be hard. ~~~ 49531 As a former instructor at a code school I always told students that learning to code would put them on a successful trajectory more than make them instantly valuable. It's not an on/off situation. A good engineer is always learning and improving. Code schools too often make it look like you attend and then succeed, there's a lot more than goes on in between. ------ davidhariri "He had a penchant for oversharing personal information and sometimes ripped hits from a colorful glass bong during video lectures with the students." "I did learn some stuff," Johnson says. "I can write some code, and I didn't know anything before I started." Oh jeez. I feel really bad for his students. ~~~ kafkaesq I wouldn't look down on that remark. People are different, and everyone needs to start somewhere. ------ jdhawk Has anyone done a coding bootcamp? With the plethora of relatively cheap/free resources out there from Universities, to professional institutions, all the way to YouTube, what is the appeal? Do the certifications count for anything to hiring managers? Do you need someone to kick you in the ass on a daily basis to keep moving? Do you need the higher touch Q&A thats not available in Forums/StackOverflow type places? ~~~ rajangdavis I went through General Assembly's Web Development Immersive 2 years ago. I have made good use of what I have learned in that program; however, I would be reluctant to recommend that everyone should take it. It really depends on how much of your own time you are willing to invest in learning the material. I had 1 year of some web development experience at that point, so I was familiar with some of the material and didn't mind putting in work to get better. It was great for me in that it rounded out some of my skills and got me interested in bash which was something I never expected. They worked really hard to get feedback from students to ensure that our experience was what we wanted and that they were also challenging us without being overwhelming. They also had a very passionate and personable staff that would answer any questions assuming that you had tried to solve your problem before asking. They encouraged students to fail first so that they would eventually not fear failure; this was one of the most important lessons that I have taken with me. I don't think you can really learn this from an online course or tutorial. I saw people go into the program without any developer experience come out of it building complex web apps that were using newer technologies (at that time) like Web Sockets and NodeJS. I also saw people go into the program and not really get much from it, but I don't know how much work they really put in. A couple of the students from my cohort are working at big name companies like Uber and Starbucks, so my takeaway is that there isn't a guaranteed route to success with these types of programs. They give you enough tools to start a fire but they leave the rest up to you. ~~~ kafkaesq Most of that sounds positive, actually. So I'd be curious as to what the basis for your net negative take was. ~~~ rajangdavis I'll bite. The negative aspects, to me, were ultimately minor in my experience but consequential for a lot of the students. This might have changed, but if you had the money, they will take you in. There is an interview process that they use to screen applicants, but my impression is that if you can pay, you get in. This creates issues where there are students that are heavily invested in a successful outcome but might not have the ability to grasp the material. I tried helping some of my colleagues but some of them just could not grasp the material and it was hard for me understand what obstructed their ability to do so. It might have been a confidence thing ("I don't get this and I never will"), but again, failure was encouraged in the program. Additionally, there were issues that occurred due to a lack of diversity in race and gender. I do not want to get into it because it's really complicated and I lack the ability and the time to give this a fair evaluation. The gist of it is: General Assembly facilitated open dialogue but not all of the participants wanted to participate. I will leave it at that. Halfway through the program, we had a teacher give pretty uninspiring lessons. The subject matter wasn't super dry or uninteresting (it was on SQL and relational databases); my feeling was that the teacher had some personal issues that were affecting his work. This sucked more for the people that had zero background in development because he was poorly teaching crucial material and none of the students were feeling it. A lot of the students complained about this and he started turning around after that. I also get the feeling that there was some "drama" in the inner workings of General Assembly. The director of our cohort quit towards the end of our immersive (week 10 out of a 12 week program); she was basically the one that ran the show and made sure that our needs for learning were met. From my understanding, she was fired because of student complaints. She was very personable and very protective of the students so I feel like there must have been some pressure from above. ~~~ kafkaesq Yup - education is hard; sounds like GA is still figuring this out. Thanks for the data points. ------ s0uthPaw88 I attended a coding bootcamp 3 years ago, and this was a major concern of mine going into it. The instructor had only taught one small class previously, so there was not much of a track record to trust. I spent quite a bit of time researching the instructor's background and speaking with his former students. Even with all that, there really was no way of knowing going into it whether it would deliver what I was hoping for. Ultimately I decided the risk of losing my $3k was worth the potential upside of a career as a software developer. Luckily, it worked out. ~~~ gaius $3k is a bargain, some charge $20k! ------ keithpeter _" Every year, dozens of new schools open, promising to teach anyone who can type the skills necessary to make a career in software development."_ OK, so people want an accessible route into the very basics. Where are the Community Colleges? In the UK, your local Further Education college will do you the very basics for not much money as an evening class. ~~~ reustle They are there, but their curriculums are extremely outdated most of the time. ~~~ walshemj The cisco academy approved evening class ones are good we had 20 switches and 20 routers to play with at Mender College in the UK but it was about £500/£600 per quarter (free if you are unemployed) ~~~ keithpeter CISCO was very much the gold standard, I'm thinking more like html -> client side -> server side (simple) -> server side (more complex). PS: I'm glad it worked for you. ------ robertjm I know this guy, he worked for me on a project for a bit. At the time, he was in Mexico on a sail boat just going from port to port working on projects remotely. He would exchange tid-bits about his life, he was definitely unhinged. At the time, I think he was avoiding prosecution in the US by being in Mexico. This is super crazy but I'll be honest, not out of character for the guy. ~~~ passivepinetree That's super interesting. Can you offer any more details about him/his skills/his life? ~~~ robertjm Not too much. I was referred to him through a friend of mine who is a recruiter who knew I was looking for rails dev's, we still talk about him every once in awhile as possibly the oddest dev that's ever worked for me. He was a pretty good Rails developer (and passionate) and very active on the Ruby Forums, I think he was banned at some point though for some of his behavior. I remember he went on a Facebook rant regarding his ex-wife on Facebook, about how she was keeping his kid(s?) away from him and (at the time) she was the reason he couldn't return to the United States. After he got hired, he basically went to the other dev's on the github and emailed all of them telling them "he was the new lead dev" on the project. I had to take an entire day calming down the rest of the team haha. ------ emeraldd This would be a perfect opportunity for someone who runs a bootcamp to contact these students and give them a chance enroll for free. It would be great PR ... ------ kafkaesq _His uneasy students began to formulate theories. "We really didn't want to believe that we had been deserted," says Lundgren, who had paid $5,988 in tuition._ My heart goes out to these bootcamp students -- scammed and otherwise. That's a heck of a lot money for someone not earning a tech salary to pony up. For a set of skills which (at that level) just aren't going to be enough to get them into the kinds of jobs the envision being in reach, at the end of the tunnel. ------ mpron I saw this a few days ago. Creepy stuff. Please do your research when choosing a bootcamp. Or learn on your own. ------ jamisteven Ide be moving to Mexico to track this scumbag down, cant be that hard, dude has a profile on every social media platform is existence. ------ throwsincenotpc I don't get it, people paid $100k to this guy to get courses through slack and online videos ? The article says 19 students, who paid $5k each for that ? are you kidding me ? ~~~ danso Yeah, this was a crazy story, but the fact that people were paying what amounts to college tuition for _learning-via-Slack-from-a-guy_ was the biggest shock to me. And I am a fan of bootcamps and think that there are bootcamps where you will get far more out of your $10,000 than you would for a year in college. But those bootcamps are _physical_ places, with hands on instruction from a variety of instructors. I don't keep track of the bootcamp scene but I imagined it to be saturated by now with a bit of the race to the bottom, in terms of quality and pricing. A teacher-via-Slack isn't shocking, the prices he commanded _are_. But maybe such an arrangement is the only resort for folks who don't live in big cities like New York, or growing hubs like Omaha? ~~~ xiaoma It's clear evidence of market demand. Even in 2016, it's likely a good bet to start a bootcamp, especially outside of the US.

Real-time payments. No interchange. An idea is now reality - Ataub24 http://blog.dwolla.com/real-time-payments-no-interchange-an-idea-is-now-reality/ ====== awakeasleep This seems like an advertisement for dwolla credit masquerading as real-time payments with no interchange. Real time payments without interchange are possible and they're going to be serious news as they'll enable micro payments. It doesn't have much to do with cloning BillMeLater.

Standing up for cinema - prismatic http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/film-making-martin-scorsese/ ====== jasode More of the Adam Mars-Jones quote from cited January 4 review[1]: _> Even the most relentless book filters diffusely into the life of the reader, while a film suspends that life for its duration. The transposition of a novel like Endo’s Silence into film, however “faithful”, can only amount to a distortion, an exaggeration overall however many elements of the book are represented. [...] In a book, too, reader and writer collaborate to produce images, while a film director hands them down._ AMJ repeats the common criticism that books are superior to movie adaptations. He also repeats the claim that books are "active" and movies are "passive" entertainment. Those dismissals have been so common for decades since the invention of "moving pictures" that I'm surprised Scorsese even responded to it. [1] [http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/subtle- absolutisms/](http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/subtle-absolutisms/) ~~~ abritinthebay While wrong, they _are_ based on a very real set of differences to the relationship of the media to the consumer. That should be celebrated however. Neither is _better_. You can argue the merits and effectiveness of an adaptation but the media it's communicated on has very little to do with that (usually). I don't know why people treat it as a team sport. ~~~ pbhjpbhj Why "wrong"? Certainly the idea of a book as active and film as passive dovetails with my own experience. Reading a book, well a story at least, to me is a creative process: I create the world the characters live in using the elements the author offers up. Watching a film I get absorbed, hopefully, in to a world that is a _fait accompli_. Edit: I should say "more active", etc.. I'd agree with the OP that watching a film is still collaborative but in a markedly different way to reading a story. ~~~ ghostly_s Cinema entirely possesses the capacity to suggest elements of the world which are not defined explicitly, just as books do. In fact I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of perception to think a film can possibly be a ' _fait accompli_ '. As an easy example, I just watched Tarkovsky's Stalker this past week. The film revolves around the exploration of a physical supernatural phenomenon called 'The Zone'. Yet there is not a single thing on screen to demonstrate the supernatural characteristics of this place, aside from the protagonist's reactions to it. ------ jonny_eh This reminds me of when Roger Ebert dismissed video games of being incapable of becoming art. Anything that requires creativity to make is art. Different mediums offer different avenues for creative expression as well as different ways of interacting with an audience. ~~~ khedoros1 > Anything that requires creativity to make is art. I strongly disagree with this statement, in the context of the definition of "art" that Ebert was using. His definition also excludes the vast majority of movies, paintings, and other things that are generally acknowledged as "art". Ebert was talking about sublime art. It's easy for something to be creative without being sublime. ~~~ cholantesh Ebert ultimately had to invent that definition of art when he found himself unable to defend his original premise. Or, really, unwilling,because he didn't want to spend time playing video games so as to bolster his argument.

F1 designer Gordon Murray pens light-weight city car - alexandros http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11301831 ====== jimbobimbo Why don't they just add wheels to the sardine can and be done with it?

GitHub's issuing CA has expired (DigiCert High Assurance EV Root CA) - nlo https://i.imgur.com/UuzvrIt.png ====== jabroni That's actually the cert on your computer allowing you to trust it that has expired. [https://blog.digicert.com/expired-intermediate- certificate/](https://blog.digicert.com/expired-intermediate-certificate/) ------ ji_reilly Seeing this on multiple sites which use DigiCert for SSL provider. Github, Bitbucket, Heroku, and even DigiCert's own site. ------ heezo Unfortunately, I'm still having an issue with this. ...if I only knew more about computers. :(

Uber, losing billions, freezes engineering hires - steeleduncan https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/08/uber-freezes-engineering-hires-amid-mounting-losses/?comments=1 ====== jfasi This isn’t bad news. This is exactly the sort of cost cutting and fat trimming a company in Uber’s position should be performing. From a tactical standpoint, Uber’s IPO acts as a promise to Wall Street that they will continue their existing business while slimming down their books. From a strategic position, it’s not as great. Uber’s rivalry with Lyft is a war of attrition: given that the two services are perfect complements, right down to the drivers themselves working both networks simultaneously, growth is entirely a function of platform-level economics. While Uber is wise to cut corporate costs before materially cutting driver commissions or raising consumer prices, it’s not exactly a show of strength to be scaling back marketing and engineering, the very departments that Uber needs to continue growing. That being said, the size of Uber’s war chest doesn’t make me worry about their ability to continue operating. If I had to prognosticate, though, I’d say this is a sign that Uber is going to be posting some rough results for a couple quarters. ~~~ jjeaff Marketing is definitely important for growth. But the whole point of technology and good engineers is that you can scale up without hiring more people. I see no reason a solid core of engineers couldn't scale Uber out indefinitely. ------ winrid I've been at a company that did a hiring/salary freeze. Really hurts moral. We can expect Uber's services to potentially degrade/not improve much for a while. ~~~ redisman Funny how different it is. Smaller companies have a hiring freeze 90% of the time. ~~~ kjeetgill At companies this size, in tech at least, you always have a constant flow of people joining and leaving. A hiring freeze means your shrinking. Your engineers are slowly evaporating, and you're not replacing them. ------ 40acres Uber needs to head back to luxury, Travis, despite his MANY flaws, always had an eye on this. Uber needs to focus on it's most profitable cities and promote the subscription service. Target families with kids using highly trusted drivers and extra safety features, expand into medical transport, and "rent a driver" services. ~~~ dahx4Eev I wish there were a real uber black service with professional drivers and better cars. ------ raiyu Original thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20659191](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20659191) ------ burlesona This feels like the sort of thing no one should be surprised by. It seems the basic premise of Uber and Lyft was to gobble up market share at enormous cost while autonomous cars were getting figured out, then switch to full driverless ASAP. But full driverless keeps being “just a few more years away,” and it looks increasingly like that’s going to be too long for Uber to avoid running out of money. ~~~ dangus I still can't figure out how Uber actually manages to lose money still. They take something like a 20% cut of the fares don't they? How is this insufficient to pay for their platform? I actually think they should be already be incredibly profitable. ~~~ akmarinov Fares don’t cover what Uber pays to drivers + all the expenses of being a worldwide company with hundreds of engineers, marketing, leases, etc. Basically Wallstreet is subsidizing taxis for people at the moment.

The vanishing began at night, frightened families packed after hearing the news - babakian http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/us/after-ruling-hispanics-flee-an-alabama-town.html?hp=&pagewanted=all ====== rick888 I feel bad for these families, but nothing really has changed. The officers are just enforcing existing immigration laws. There are legal ways of getting into the US and more immigrants should use this route in the future or suffer the consequences of getting booted out of the country. In most other countries in the world, the same thing will happen. ~~~ sixtofour I wonder why those legal ways are not more used?

YouTube Stars Are Pushing a Shady Gambling Site - smacktoward https://www.thedailybeast.com/youtubes-biggest-stars-are-pushing-a-shady-polish-gambling-site ====== mabbo I'm actually pretty impressed by how clever and insidious the "YouTuber" advertising game is. All these 'personalities' and 'stars' put out whatever content continues to get views- and there's a beautiful survival of the fittest game going on there- and then once they have subscribed viewers they can subtly promote anything at all and be paid for it. My wife watches a bunch of 'cleaning' and 'makeup/style' YouTubers. All I see when I view it are advertisements pretending to be personal videos. She loves it. The ones for kids are especially creepy when you really dig into what's going on. They've convinced people to subscribe to advertisements so they see them as soon as they're posted. That's even better than Facebook convincing everyone to give them all their personal information so it can be 'shared'. ~~~ jasode _> I view it are advertisements pretending to be personal videos. She loves it._ Your wife has a normal response to ads when the _topic is interesting_ to the viewer. That's the holy grail of "relevant ads": the boundaries of the "ad" get blurred and the message of the product being sold is better received. Women buy Vogue Magazine for the ads of fashion. It's not just a female thing. Some males bought Computer Shopper[1] specifically for the ads. Why would consumers _pay_ for ads?!? Because they're _relevant_ to their interests. [1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=Computer+Shopper+magazine&so...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Computer+Shopper+magazine&source=lnms&tbm=isch) ~~~ gowld There's a qualitative difference between being interested in learning the facts of the market -- what's on offer -- and being interested in editorial content that is actually an ad. For one, market facts (price, features, etc) are more likely to be honest, and for two, self-touting advertisements aren't hiding their bias. Advertorial content is doubly deceptive -- the content is biased AND the bias is hidden. ~~~ YeGoblynQueenne The difference between computer products and make-up products is that computer products are aimed at people who think they are too smart to be sold anything they don't really want, so the advertisement must be subtle. But that's it. Marketing products means advertising them to consumers. There's no gettting around that, no matter what the product is. ~~~ Distant_horizon Respectfully, makeup shoppers are chemists and biologists these days – they are also unaware that they're being sold, until their bathroom drawer overflows with $2000 worth of jars. ~~~ YeGoblynQueenne I did not write that makeup shoppers do not include chemists and biologists. You're assuming too much. Edit: and it's very irritating. ------ umvi I can't tell if this article was the original or if H3H3's video was the original, but H3H3 also covers this - [https://youtu.be/3ewyEF3Wd9M](https://youtu.be/3ewyEF3Wd9M) TL;DW - Youtubers with large young audiences are promoting loot box style gambling. Youtube seems like the wild west. On the dark side we have channels bursting with (possibly) human trafficked vietnamese women producing sexual content masquerading as slice-of-life, huge youtubers promoting gambling to children, elsagate, etc. On the light side we have people's videos being flagged for copyright violations over literal sounds of nature, music they produced themselves, or music playing in the background. Also "fair use" doesn't exist on YouTube - a 1 second clip is enough for a company to claim your video apparently. There are still a lot of niche channels I love on YouTube but I would _never_ want to try to make a living producing content on that platform myself... seems too volatile. ~~~ qeternity > On the dark side we have channels bursting with (possibly) human trafficked > vietnamese women producing sexual content masquerading as slice-of-life Can you explain for those of us out of the loop... ~~~ QuotedForTruth paymoneywubby did a video about it [1]. Basically its a woman casually interacting with her children but behaving in very suggestive ways such as opening her legs to expose her underwear or seductively washing the car. Hundreds of videos across lots of channels with one woman, but its part of a whole lot of "super soft-core" youtube. [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc4HzbD0GLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc4HzbD0GLI) ~~~ jandrese I guess the target market for this is people trapped behind porn filters that can still get YouTube? Seems like a very niche market. This is the Internet, it's not that hard to find porn. If someone is scouring your browser history those softcore channels don't seem like they would be hiding much, unless they have titles like "small engine maintenance -- carburetor cleaning". I'm trying to imagine some 14 year old boy trying to explain to an angry mother that yes, he's that interested in the boring day to day life details of an Asian mother. ~~~ QuotedForTruth They were (just read that youtube took them down) getting millions of views. From what I understand, ad revenue on a site like youtube is much higher per view than on adult sites because most advertisers are so reluctant to put their product next to adult content. I'm not sure who watches them either, but they were clearly making money producing the content. ~~~ jandrese Thinking about it some more I bet part of the appeal is the voyeuristic nature of it. It probably feels a lot more like real life, where you very rarely get jumped by horny housewives looking for an anonymous lay, and more realistically get some sideboob or a panty flash from people wearing hot weather clothes. But as you note, it's mostly a good deal for the producers that can monetize the videos a lot easier on a legit platform like YouTube, and there is probably a reasonably big captive market of people who are trapped behind porn filters. ------ skocznymroczny These 'mystery boxes' thing are super common in the gaming world. There are many websites in which you can bet money to open a mystery box containing a game, or in case of some games a skin for the game's weapons. The websites themselves are very manipulative. First of all, many offer a "test spin", which usually gives you a very good prize just to lure you in. Secondly, they use popular Youtube personalities to perform "box opening" videos, they get e.g. 30 free box openings. What isn't told, is that it's trivial for the mystery box website to boost the winning chance for the youtuber so that people think "wow, it's so easy, I can win that too". Thirdly, when doing the spin animation, they usually show you that the prized possession you were after was just around the corner, you were very close. Just give it a one more spin, you'll surely get it this time! ~~~ gowld Back in the legacy world of arcades and carnivals, Mark Rober did some nice videos about the analog/physic and electronic tricks of scam games: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_ZlWJ3qJI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_ZlWJ3qJI) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXBfwgwT1nQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXBfwgwT1nQ) It's quite a problem that all these gambling scams are (to more or lesser extent) regulated in geographic jurisdictions, but Internet-bsaed systems bypass all local sovereignty. How long before the governments step up and demand that all Internet businesses get import licenses and traffic must pass through "customs" at each ISP "port of entry" for their goods and services? ------ iheartpotatoes The Paul brothers really give me the creeps. I'm old (50+) and don't understand them. My hipness crapped out around the time of Jackass on MTV, and this feels like the rich grandchild of that moment, except now they are entirely focused on money. Same goes for PewDiePie. Who the hell sits down to actually watch him? I tried watching all three, and clearly I'm not their target. The fame and influence they wield, is it more or less nefarious than using celebs to market pre 00's? It feels more so to me. I finally understand the cultural gap my grandparents must have felt when I played my Atari 2600 all day and they just shook their heads. ~~~ djhworld > Who the hell sits down to actually watch him? Children ~~~ quink PewDiePie skews a bit older than that. [https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/pewdiepie-reveals- his-...](https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/pewdiepie-reveals-his-channel- statistics-after-alinity-suggested-all-his-fans-were-9-year-olds-110491) ------ mxscho Regardless of whether gambling or gambling advertisements are ethically acceptable: A "provably fair" system [1] ensures that no one is scammed and the client can be 100% sure that the odds are not manipulated in any way. However, when examining the "provably fair" system used by this specific site mysterybrand.net, one can see that the commonly used algorithms have deliberately been manipulated in a way such that the actual draws done on the server can be arbitrary without respecting any predeclared odds. E.g., the verification site just checks whether md5($randomClientSeed + $publicServerHash) == md5($randomClientSeed + $publicServerHash), based on things which are all known pre-roll, and which is obviously true, not involving the $secretServerSeed at all. It's a joke. They even link to the URL mentioned above, but their implementation is completely wrong. Still not saying that I am pro/con gambling, but just seeing a website at least implementing the provably fair system in a non-malicious way, it would be a start. [1] [https://dicesites.com/provably-fair](https://dicesites.com/provably-fair) ------ beezischillin Please change my mind if you believe otherwise but I feel like this is all a consequence of YouTube completely screwing creators over when it comes to copyright and ad-revenue. The site's been going downhill since YouTube's refusal to actually fight for its content creators and decision to run with big name corporations as their preferred content producers. While corporate channels are gaining incredible amounts of promotion, immunity and power, others had their incomes completely gutted. Some people have seen something like this ahead of many others, people like LinusTechTips, who, for years now worked on partnerships with companies to gain relevant sponsors but many others didn't and were hit hard by all this. YouTube even removed their abilities to link their Patreon as part of their videos, if I remember correctly. Realistically speaking, I'm unsure what the real solution to this would be, other than YouTube doing its best to provide its creators a stable source of income.. (And on a small side-note: ads on YouTube itself have become quite dodgy, here in Eastern Europe. I keep seeing video and image ads for shoddy gambling sites, Russian singles sites (not even kidding!) and weird Jesus-cults. I am having very real flashbacks to the early 2000s Warez-internet.) ------ pawelk From the TOS of the company website: > These terms are interpreted and are subject to the jurisdiction and the laws > of Poland Which is really intriguing, since organizing any form of lottery or chance- based game is so complicated, that virtually nobody who knows anything about the subject would dare to try. When I worked in advertising nobody in their right mind would create a promotional campaign with prizes given away to randomly picked winners, there had to be objective criteria (skill, talent, popular vote etc). E.g. when we made a memo-like browser game, the lawyers said we need to show all the cards for a few seconds, so there's an element of skill (memorization of the board) instead of chance (the cards being randomly distributed). And if my memory serves, finishing the game was required to enter the contest, but to win the prize there was an extra text field where participants had to answer something like "why would you like to win the prize?", and the best answer, picked by a jury, was awarded. There were people playing poker with family and friends raided by police. (I think poker is now considered at leat partially skill based and some laws were fixed since). There were teachers going trough hell when trying to make a simple lottery as a part of school fund raiser event. If they really operate in / from Poland, it may not take long for this to get shut down if the authorities get involved. Edit: found a detailed overview of the regulations in English here: [https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/8-635-6028?transi...](https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/8-635-6028?transitionType=Default&contextData=\(sc.Default\)&firstPage=true&comp=pluk&bhcp=1) ~~~ Ralfp If they are really a lottery, they are betting it on nobody from Poland taking interest in them, because lotteries in Poland are de-facto state monopoly due to amount of requirements imposed on lottery organizers: Lottery draws are done in presence of commission including members of state's Commission of games and gambling (Komisja gier i zakładów - KGiZ). Commission members are named in document describing game's terms and conditions. Commission records and protocols drawing process, and stores those because lottery participants have unconditional right to request access to them. Possible fines went into millions of PLN - enough to sink small company and piss off larger one. I've been working at advertising agency doing lotteries for certain big home brand. The way we did that was paying 3rd party company with ties to KGiZ for organizing those, because it was crazy to try doing it otherwise. ------ porpoisely Other than being youtubers, what's the difference between them and NJTransit promoting DraftKings for months? TV networks and media outlets like thedailybeast also push gambling ads to casinos, vegas, online gambling, etc. ~~~ TheAdamist Casinos, and maybe draft kings are regulated on how much they have to pay out, and actually do pay out. These sites may not bother to pay out, and who knows the odds... ------ Simon_says I was curious about the videos in question. This is Jake Pauls': [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wO2RIEKMSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wO2RIEKMSg) It's so awful! How is this so popular? ~~~ CSMastermind [https://youtu.be/fTu8jzVXTi0](https://youtu.be/fTu8jzVXTi0) It's popular among children who like the high energy, intense emotions, and jump cuts. They also mix in base humor while heavily cross promoting among themselves. So their viewers feel like they're part of team or a movement or whatever. ~~~ pbhjpbhj It's fashion, crossed with cult. The death of fixed-timetable broadcast TV feeds in to it too - as with soap operas it gives people some common ground to use in social situations (kids at school, for example). ------ losthobbies A youtuber called tmartn got into trouble doing something akin to gambling and lootboxes a few years ago. So scummy considering most of his subscribers were kids. ~~~ gizmo385 tmartn's trouble was especially disgusting because he owned the site that we was "advertising" that he had "found". ------ xg15 I find the linked tweets from another Youtuber [1] and a random person [2] quite informative about the mentality that is apparently present in the Youtuber sphere. Reminder: this is about channels with a significant acknowledged underage audience. [1] [https://mobile.twitter.com/KEEMSTAR/status/10802743994109542...](https://mobile.twitter.com/KEEMSTAR/status/1080274399410954240) [2] [https://mobile.twitter.com/protecdaniel/status/1080384613988...](https://mobile.twitter.com/protecdaniel/status/1080384613988524033) ------ NelsonMinar This is straight up evil and Google and the shills for the gambling should all be held accountable. ------ jdlyga PewDiePie just called them out in his latest video. ------ dspillett The linked site seems broken ATM (no certificate being served, page content blank), but the WBM has it: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190103122009/https://www.theda...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190103122009/https://www.thedailybeast.com/youtubes- biggest-stars-are-pushing-a-shady-polish-gambling-site) ------ nichochar This has been an ongoing issue in the world of CSGO for a very long time, and CS is finally slowly beating it. It took a lot of great journalism from Richard Lewis to beat it. If you're curious you can for example check out this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFpwOzfXErs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFpwOzfXErs) ------ rhacker The television industry has had many years to build out rules/regs and basic standards for content. Is it time to start treating youtube posters as television stations and regulate them similarly? ------ bluetidepro [a bit of a tangent rant here] Beyond how despicable it is that these YouTube "stars" are promoting this, it's really interesting to see how these concept of a website even came about. I don't know much about the origins of it, but I'm going to assume they took a play from the modern gaming industry playbook. It was only a matter of time that someone realized modern gaming companies are "geniuses" in their execution of this same thing in their games. It's crazy that these gaming companies are causing such big problems for our youth by all the microtransactions and addiction problems in their triple A title games. I know some countries have done a great job regulated it (Germany, I believe?), but that regulation really needs to make its way to the USA to kill off these greedy parasites. It really is starting to be a black cloud around a lot of the modern gaming industry. I would rather pay double the price of a game (~$60), and have no microtransactions at all, vs these games that charge full price and then put have the content behind a paywall of microtransactions -- cosmetic or not. /rant haha ~~~ jdietrich It's kinda Valve's fault. Team Fortress 2 was the first major game in the west to implement loot boxes; the CS:GO skins economy spawned a legion of scummy third-party gambling sites, from which this site is clearly derived. Weirdly, it may also partly be the fault of former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. [http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began- with-a...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a- strange-email/) ~~~ leppr Isn't it ironic to blame Valve, when they're pretty much the only ones doing it right ? By restricting microtransactions to cosmetic elements, the thing they play on is one's vanity. Players who are content exploring the gameplay can do so unencumbered. There is no "special club" for players who buy items. They don't beat you more easily in the games. The main focus is still on winning the matches. There is no incentive to buy those cosmetic items except players thinking "I want to look cool". Whatever Valve may do, that's not a vice they are responsible for creating, or that anyone is ever exempt from (we all have to buy clothes). They merely brought it, opt-in, to their games. ~~~ jdietrich "I want to look cool" is a _very_ strong motivation. A particularly rare and sought-after CS:GO skin could be worth as much as $2000. Valve actively support the exchange of virtual items for real money via the Community Market, and provide market access to third-party sites via an API. That combination of factors has created a hive of scum and villainy. CS:GO skins became the ideal unit of value for unregulated gambling sites - they're highly liquid, they have a stable value, they're freely exchangeable for real money and there's no KYC or age verification checks. The mechanics and appearance of Mystery Brand are almost identical to numerous existing CS:GO gambling sites; they even use the same colour-coding for the rarity of items. Some CS:GO gambling sites already offer real-world prizes like electronics and designer clothing. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_gambling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_gambling) [https://hellcase.com/en/open/knifelife](https://hellcase.com/en/open/knifelife) [https://www.csgolive.com/case/Millionaire%20Case%20%28vIRL%2...](https://www.csgolive.com/case/Millionaire%20Case%20%28vIRL%29) ~~~ leppr Your thesis rests on the opinion that merely "creating freely exchangable tokens of value" is a sin in itself. I'm sure that's a defensible position, but far from common sense. I certainly don't agree with it. ~~~ TheBeardKing The issue is that children should not have access to gamble with real world currency. ------ vorpalhex YouTube is a website that entirely fulfills the idea that no publicity is bad publicity. Which is a shame, because there's shows like Binging with Babish which are quite nice. edit - remove comment because apparently Logan Paul and Jake Paul are not the same person, they just seem like it. ~~~ smcl That was a different Paul brother - Logan Paul - albeit he's an equally awful person.

Apple, Cisco, and Dow 15000 - ajaymehta http://blog.adamnash.com/2012/02/13/apple-cisco-dow-15000/ ====== rdl The big point to know about the Dow is that it's basically arbitrary and not rigorous, but has a long history, so enh. I personally watch NASDAQ Composite, S&P 500, and Vanguard VTI (<http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSEARCA%3AVTI>) a lot more. If you _just_ want to track large caps, Vanguard MGC. The Vanguard funds track MSCI indices and have super low expense ratios.

France summons U.S. ambassador over spying report - stfu http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/21/us-france-nsa-idUSBRE99K04920131021 ====== hbbio It's pretty hilarious situation after France denied fly-zone to the Bolivian Presidential aircraft this summer when they "feared" that Snowden might be inside... Voltaire said something like: "God, please protect me from my friends. I take care of my enemies." ~~~ mercurial Yes, cry me a river. Supposedly "allied" governments have no qualms spying on each other, or engaging in "economic intelligence" for the military-industrial lobby. Would the French DGSE (or other western intelligence agencies) engage in large-scale surveillance of their own citizens, let alone foreigners, if they believed they could get away with it? You bet. ~~~ p4bl0 They do. If you can read French, check out [http://reflets.info/](http://reflets.info/). ~~~ Sagat Really suspicious looking site, bro. ~~~ bobwaycott What exactly do you find suspicious? ~~~ p4bl0 It's understandable, and it's something that Reflets.info editors acknoledge: use of memes (lolcats for instance) does not look "pro", and there are opinion and rant posts along with very profound and detailed in-depth investigation articles. You know, don't judge a blog by its cover ;-). ~~~ Sagat What he said. ------ rtpg Slightly off topic, but what frustrates me about all this is that there is absolutely no outrage in France about the DGSE's absolutely heinous practices in this domain. Complete domestic surveillance without ANY legal framework whatsoever, not even some stage court like FISA court. ~~~ Sagat There's a huge difference between being spied upon by your own government and being spied upon by some manifest-destiny-following foreigner. ~~~ Loughla And that would be? ~~~ r00fus One ostensibly controls (through the ballot box) a domestic outfit. Ostensibly being the operative word. Plus, it's hard to storm the Bastille if it happens to be overseas. ~~~ Loughla Maybe I'm too cynical, but I call your bluff on both of those. At this point, it appears that our elected representatives all have the same means in mind, regardless of the ends they seek (I would also argue that the sought-ends are the same, too, but I get into a tin-foil hatty area with that). That is across all nations and all parties. Whether it is a domestic or foreign outfit, the means are the same, and I would argue that fact outweighs whatever the theoretical end would be. Also, with the military might of modern 1st world countries, I don't really believe that it matters if you have to cross an ocean first if you are going to literally storm the Bastille; and with the internet age, the distance doesn't really matter for a figurative storm, either. ~~~ r00fus > Also, with the military might of modern 1st world countries, I don't really > believe that it matters if you have to cross an ocean first if you are going > to literally storm the Bastille; and with the internet age, the distance > doesn't really matter for a figurative storm, either. A history lesson - storming the bastille [1] is not done by a military, but by pitchfork wielding mobs. Yes, it's going to be tougher to "throw out the bums" if they happen to be a distant country with modern armaments. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storming_of_the_Bastille) ------ jusben1369 The whole thing's just awkward. All of these agencies understand and know that this is going on. But when concrete evidence is given to the public they have to call in ambassador's and do this whole "this is terrible!" song and dance. Then it's back to normal. ~~~ harryf You do have love "trying to play it down" reporting like this though... > The NSA's targets appeared to be individuals suspected of links to > terrorism, as well as those tied to French business or politics, Le Monde > wrote. ...setting up the "we accidentally all your powerful people while hunting terrorists honest" defense. ------ jbogp We should have stuck to our beloved Minitel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel) ------ oelmekki > Le Monde's revelations that 70.3 million pieces of French telephone data > were recorded by the NSA between Dec 10, 2012 and Jan 8, 2013 Fun fact about that : this number is actually bigger than french population (~ 66M). ~~~ eis "pieces of telephone data" is not very specific but it could mean "x called Y at T for D seconds". And it's over a period of nearly a month. Many people do phone calls at least once a day. So 70M records for a population of 66M is not unrealistic for widescale surveillance. What the number makes clear though is that it can't be for targeted terrorism- suspect surveilance. Unless you have something like a million suspects in France. And in any case they should ask the french authorities/spies for help if they want to know something about french residents. I wonder how the USA would react if other governments started openly surveilling US citizens/companies/politicians. That'd be one fun thing to watch. ~~~ andyjohnson0 I read oelmekki's comment as putting the number of monitored calls in context, not questioning its correctness. ~~~ oelmekki Indeed, it was purely factual. Of course, I'm not implying every french was spied on - it won't make sense since a good part are just kids. But when your records count for a country exceed their population, you can't be expected to only watch a few bad guys, that's a sign of massive surveillance - or strategic surveillance over tactical surveillance, as Assange would put it. ------ walshemj French foreign minster "I'm shocked, shocked to find that spying is going on in here!" NSA spook in black shades hands a usb stick to the Minister "your info on Angles strategy for the next eu summit" French foreign minster (sote voce) "Oh, thank you very much." ------ p4bl0 It would be quite ironic (but sadly, not impossible) if the technologies (like 0days, massive traffic analysis tools, DPI tools, etc.) used by the NSA to spy on France were some of the numerous that are sold to them by French companies like Vupen, Amesys, Qosmos… ------ ajays To paraphrase a famous line: I'm shocked, shocked that there's spying going on! Snark aside: what may have riled French feathers is the fact that NSA spied on politicians too. I bet they have lots of blackmail stuff. ~~~ gadders Possibly given how French politicians behave... ~~~ Sagat Please don't apply american fundamentalist puritan standards to everyone, please. ~~~ gadders Yes, you're right. I don't know why I ever thought raping hotel maids, attempting to rape journalists, or going on trial for pimping would ever reflect badly on a politician [1] Clearly only a fundamentalist puritan would object to those things. I'm so old fashioned. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss- Kahn#New_York...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss- Kahn#New_York_v._Strauss-Kahn_and_later_allegations) ~~~ Sagat 1\. Those are all allegations. In fact, the whole DSK mess is extremely unclear and the case presented against him is highly suspicious, although it is clear that he is a bit seedy. Some believe it to be a political machination for a number of reasons. 2\. One politician's behavior means ALL politicians of that country behave wrongly? ------ gelnior Frenches don't really worry about that, they are already building the next generation of personal cloud ;) [http://cozy.io](http://cozy.io) ~~~ pgeorgi I find it hard to take a security related project seriously that installs with: $ curl [http://cozy.io/install_cozy.sh](http://cozy.io/install_cozy.sh) | HOST=root@ip sh # sudoer required Edit: even more annoying is that this script is only supposed to run on Debian/Ubuntu - so this script isn't even any more portable than .deb packages Edit2 to be more constructive: would you accept contributions to build packages? Apart from this annoyance the project looks interesting! ~~~ gelnior How do you install new stuff on your machine without super user rights ? Do you have a specific user to run apt-get ? ~~~ colanderman apt-get doesn't run unsigned, unvetted shell scripts downloaded over unprotected channels. ~~~ gelnior About the signing part, we definitely have to improve that. Thank you for mentioning. About the channel, the (real) install script is based on Fabric and use SSH. So you can refer directly to this: [http://cozy.io/host/install.html](http://cozy.io/host/install.html) ~~~ afreak You also should be using HTTPS for these sort of situations. Not that what you are suggesting is good in the first place.

A UK housing bubble? - jseliger http://soberlook.com/2014/04/a-uk-housing-bubble-or-something-else.html ====== EliRivers I can't speak for populations elsewhere, but the British public are fucking idiots when it comes to houses. There is no limit, NONE, to what the British public would agree to pay for a house if someone was willing to front them the money, and there is no limit to how bad the housing has to get before they realise how stupid they are. You could advertise a one room bedsit made of cardboard for a million quid and if some bank was willing to lend the money, some Brit would do it. ------ acd Central banks are creating house bubbles by artificially controlling the price of new money the interest rate and then they save the banks which default on bad loans so the debt is kept intact. This moves money from the middle classes up the chain to the upper class who owns most of the debt. ------ cylinder There are housing bubbles pretty much _everywhere_ right now. By my own definition, any home that requires a 30-year mortgage and a two-income household to afford is overpriced. The availability of this type of credit is detrimental to society and should be prohibited on equitable grounds (this needs to be combined with prohibitions on investment into housing by non- occupiers and non-citizens), but it's too late to prohibit the practice because the real estate ponzi would collapse and send us all back into recessions.

M2OS: A Small and Lightweight Ada RTOS for Microcontrollers - pjmlp https://m2os.unican.es/ ====== numlock86 This: > allows to apply the advanced techniques used in high integrity systems (i.e. > aircraft flight control, medical devices, critical industrial control) to > the smallest MCUs used by industry and hobbyists But also this: > M2OS implements one-shot non-preemptive scheduling policy Uhm, what? Those two paragraphs cancel out each other pretty much. > The STM32F4 board is based on the ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller. The amount > of memory available in this board does not justify the use of a small RTOS > as M2OS, however we have decided to port M2OS to this board to explore its > implementation on ARM microcontrollers. STM32F4 is a controller family, not a board. Is this some GPT-3 output? The list goes on ... Seriously, what am I even looking at? Is this just some SEO optimized site with a bunch of buzzwords and some seemingly valid content? ~~~ parsecs If you look at ST's product chart page, STM32F4XX microcontrollers can have anywhere from 512K to 2056K of flash, maybe they're suggesting that 512K doesn't justify the use of small rtos? ~~~ Gibbon1 It's usually not the amount of flash that's the problem with an RTOS on an embedded microcontroller. It's the amount of RAM. Because each process requires it's own stack. That said STM32 parts generally have enough. ------ Koshkin _There 's a mini-RTOS in my language!_ [https://blog.adacore.com/theres-a-mini-rtos-in-my- language](https://blog.adacore.com/theres-a-mini-rtos-in-my-language) Fascinating. ------ snvzz There's quite a lot of OSS RTOSs. [https://www.osrtos.com/](https://www.osrtos.com/) ------ staycoolboy When did Ada become popular in the embedded RTOS space? First I've heard of it and I've been working in the space for two decades. ~~~ NovemberWhiskey In aerospace and/or defense? ~~~ staycoolboy No. Is that where Ada is used? ~~~ NovemberWhiskey Yup; there's real-time Ada in half the things flying around, and most all of the ones painted grey. ~~~ staycoolboy That is amazing. There are so many good links in the peer comments. I worked at STMicro, then briefly at Arm, then at IAR. I never once encountered Ada. Two separate worlds!

Intel Thread Building Blocks - samjltaylor https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org ====== krapht I'd be interested in reading about real world experience with Intel TBB, and comparisons to Fastflow, which seems to be the nearest competitor. ~~~ danieljh From what I can see in the scientific community it seems like TBB does not get the attention it deserves. In my opinion this comes from two simple facts: 1/ it's easier to throw a OpenMP #pragma on your loop after detecting the bottleneck with a profiler and 2/ you need to understand some TBB concepts like partitioning/splitting to implement your own algorithms. That is, TBB much more integrates into the language (modern C++ with lambdas etc.). I won't tell you much about TBB's concurrent containers (maps, queues, vectors, ...), parallel algorithms (sort, scan, reduce, ...), or memory allocators. Those are explained in detail in the documentation. What I want to tell you about is TBB's Pipeline and FlowGraph feature, because of how powerful they are and how often they are simply ignored. TBB's pipeline lets you build a pipeline of parallel or serial stages. On a high level it really is function composition, with the benefit of TBB deciding on the level of parallelism. Here is an example of using TBB's pipeline to receive from the network, deserialize the blob and merge the results concurrently and potentially in parallel: [https://github.com/daniel- j-h/DistributedSearch/blob/97224b1...](https://github.com/daniel- j-h/DistributedSearch/blob/97224b179fdc050dc219287616e8d3073e0e0a8c/Service.cc#L114) You can find a quick explanation in this blog post: [https://daniel-j-h.github.io/post/intuitive-monadic-bind- kle...](https://daniel-j-h.github.io/post/intuitive-monadic-bind-kleisli- composition/) All you have to do is create your stages as functions: take input from stage n-1, process it and move ownership of the item over to stage n. Note: C++11's move semantics do not require you to pass raw pointers around or do the memory management yourself, as it is done in TBB's documentation! As you can see, you only need the parallel_pipeline function (and make_filter<In, Out> for when the stages are not passed directly as lambdas): [https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/docs/help/reference/...](https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/docs/help/reference/algorithms/parallel_pipeline_func.htm) TBB's pipeline is really powerful for scenarios where a linear processing chain is needed, e.g. face detection with OpenCV where you have to 1/ grab a frame 2/ do some histogram corrections 3/ apply gaussian blur 4/ apply a face detection algorithm 5/ merge face's position into circular buffer 6/ do average over this buffer to estimate face position. TBB's FlowGraph is for when your dependencies are more difficult to express as a simple pipeline. In the OpenCV example, maybe you need to buffer 5 frames for the face detection, maybe you need to join inputs from a camera and a video and react on when a face is found in a camera frame. An example for expressing arbitrary dependencies is here: [https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/docs/help/reference/...](https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/docs/help/reference/flow_graph/dependency_flow_graph_example.htm) And an example for joining two nodes: [https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/docs/help/reference/...](https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/docs/help/reference/flow_graph/message_flow_graph_example.htm) This is the documentation's starting point for FlowGraph: [https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/docs/help/index.htm#...](https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/docs/help/index.htm#reference/flow_graph.htm) There is also a book about TBB out there and it contains some additional examples. But as it is with most of the documentation, those examples are not written in modern C++ (C++11/C++14) and the book is a bit dated. ~~~ gonewest That's a good answer. Here's one more example from the visual effects industry. This is for parallel evaluation of potentially complex dependency graphs in an interactive character engine. [http://www.multithreadingandvfx.org/course_notes/Paralleleva...](http://www.multithreadingandvfx.org/course_notes/ParallelevaluationofcharacterrigsusingTBB.pdf) ~~~ vvanders We'd look at TBB at a previous gig for something similar. However we never ending up pursuing it for unrelated reasons.

Rockstar technologist wanted - Cambridge, MA - iowaBob Rockstar technologist wanted to join a team of two in Cambridge, MA for an exciting startup. We currently have a beta site fully designed in XHTML &#38; CSS with all the specs laid out and need you buckle down for the next two weeks and wire up the backend.<p>We will pay you, yes pay, to complete the backend of our site. This time will be used to evaluate you as a team member and if you fit in, we will ask you to join our team.<p>Right now, we are in discussions with angel funds and are also aiming to make it to YC winter 10’. If you are a dedicated and energetic technologist this is a great opportunity to hop into something that works.<p>Reply to "[email protected]" with qualifications, enthusiasm and availability. ====== minsight The tone and word choice of this posting will probably alienate more people than it attracts. "Rockstar" might have been appropriate 10 years ago, but the bubble burst, and nobody buys into that anymore. In most worthwhile enterprises, the CSS and xhtml are a thin veneer on top of the site's value. Your posting makes it sound as if the guts of your app are an afterthought, "wired up" in two weeks (simple!), but requiring a "rockstar" (apparently not simple!). ------ ksvs I would change a few things if I were you. People are going to give you a hard time for (a) using the R word, (b) the implication that writing your actual app is merely a matter of "wiring up the back end," (c) the email address. ------ spooneybarger i hear trent reznor as some free time on his hands, as he is reknowned for being both a rockstar and as a preeminent technologist within his current field i suspect he would fit your needs to a t.

Marissa Mayer, Fatherhood, and Having It All - glaak http://www.technologywoman.com/2012/08/03/marissa-mayer-fatherhood-and-having-it-all/ ====== livestyle By no means does she have it all..How can she have it all when she is going to have her child raised by someone else for a majority of the time. There are always trade offs my. 02

Edward Snowden's First Day as a Free Man in Russia Involved Offers of Jobs - ktavera http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/08/01/edward_snowden_job_offers_russia_s_facebook_vkontakte_may_want_to_hire_nsa.html ====== WestCoastJustin He should go work for Kaspersky.

The Pirate Bay is Offline. Where are Our Collective Guts Hiding? - rizzn http://siliconangle.com/ver2/2009/08/24/the-pirate-bay-is-offline-where-are-collective-guts-hiding/ ====== DanielStraight The Pirate Bay SHOULD be offline. Guts would've been blocking it because it was illegal even though it pissed off half your customers to do so. So, you think I'm wrong... tell me why. ~~~ rizzn Did you RTFA? It's more than just TPB. But since you asked... ... it's about free speech. TPB is not illegal, and it's not a source of piracy. It's a search engine. You think TPB's illegal, then so is Google, since you can use both for the same purpose. Do you have the "guts" to pull the plug on Google? By your standard, it's just as illegal. They both point to .torrent files containing pirated material.

Chris (Moot) Poole's testimony in the Sarah Palin hacking case - aresant http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/fbi/turns-out-4chan-not-lawless-it-seems ====== frisco The idea that "4chan isn't as lawless as it seems" is silly. Moot has always said that he'd give the authorities logs and such if they came asking for it with the appropriate warrants in hand. He's always told /b/ that 4chan isn't a shelter from the FBI. ------ drinian The court reporter did a heroic job on this transcript. Not very many misspellings. Can anyone tell what the cross-examination is getting at?

Spreading the gospel of entrepreneurship in the developing world - cawel http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11848444 ====== cawel Interesting (as well as recurrent) property of the developing world, notably different from the developed world: “If Endeavor had been an investor, rather than an independent, objective, non- profit enabler, it would not have been trusted by the business elite, or the entrepreneurs,” she insists. “Trust is everything.”

Startups offering free products or services in response to Coronavirus - vccafe https://www.vccafe.com/2020/03/18/100-startups-offering-free-products-and-services-in-response-to-coronavirus/ ====== Kaibeezy Thanks for posting this! If anyone knows of other resources and directories for this kind of info, please comment. My company has a “coronavirus edition” product coming out next week and we’re looking for ways to connect with users who can benefit. There will be thousands like us, as there bloody well should be.

Recasting Silicon Valley’s role in society - mathattack https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/23/recasting-silicon-valleys-role-in-society/ ====== hueving The author bashes ride sharing and home rental apps then goes on to talk about how we should improve markets. Both of these served to discover the real market value of things (taxis are garbage and people were forced to use them so now people flock to uber/lyft/whatever, rent control is literally an attempt to regulate that something is worth less than it is). Then the author asks the ominous "do we want a 150mph thing driving itself"? Self-driving cars are still in development and they are already safer than people. Planes travel 500mph and they fly themselves. A spacex rocket flies itself. I'm starting to think this author is a bit daft and is just reducing things to, "I don't like the change that is happening because it's scary. I'll stick to my horse and buggy." ~~~ dilemma >Planes travel 500mph and they fly themselves. Case in point: Why Tesla's naming of Autopilot is misleading. ~~~ taf2 When looking at how autopilot is used in other industries like boats [http://www.westmarine.com/WestAdvisor/Selecting-an- Autopilot](http://www.westmarine.com/WestAdvisor/Selecting-an-Autopilot) What Tesla uses as the name does not seem far off at all. ~~~ dilemma The point is that the parent thinks planes fly themselves. ------ Kurtz79 I think it's a healthy discussion to be had. Yes, the vast majority of problems startups aim to solve are really "first world problems". All those "help us changing the world" snippets you find even in job offers here in HN, are naïve in the best case, and insulting in the worst. On the other hand, it's unfair to expect them to take the role of "society's saviors": many of the real problems should be the domain of governments and policy. Expecting for-profit, private companies to solve those it's a huge cop-out and unrealistic. (EDIT) More context: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/solving- all...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/solving-all-the- wrong-problems.html) ~~~ mobiuscog For a long time now, entrepreneurs have been solving the 'convenience' problem, as they have found that it what makes them the most money. It's not about solving important 'problems' for most - it's about how they can make the most money, and that is usually by providing more convenience to people. This is, of course, how business works in a capitalist society - the issue is that the problems they solve are often marketed as being the most important, whereas they're just selling a dream. I'm sure they would solve the major problems if they could and there was sufficient money in it - look at how the drugs companies operate - but this is (and has always been) about money. Amazon are running their competition for better robot picking - are they also running competitions for how to help people whose jobs are replaced by robots ? Silicon Valley has a single role - to make (more) money for those people investing into it. That's all. There's little to no philanthropy, and when there is it's generally from people who are already far wealthier than is required to live (an excessively comfortable) life. ~~~ ZeroGravitas Halfway through your comment I thought of the analogy to drug companies, which solve problems like impotence rather than Ebola because the people with impotence have lots of money and the people with Ebola don't. Worse than even solving the so called first-world-problems, they invest a fair amount of time on "evergreening" which is basically fraud or at the very, very best rent- seeking. Yet, you then used them as an example of an industry solving the big problems. ~~~ prodigal_erik I'm continually surprised at the minimization of impotence. Have you imagined never being able to have sex again for life? ~~~ ZeroGravitas Appropriately enough, I've taken a medicine which as one of the side effects, can cause permanent impotence or loss of orgasm, as well as suicide and many other bad things. It would appear that the evidence for that drug actually being effective in what it seeks to treat is controversial. It seemed clearly better till they realised that the drug companies weren't releasing the studies that showed it in a bad light. Effectively tossing a coin and only revealing they had done so when it matched their preferred outcome. ------ mseebach "People sometimes build software that sometimes have undesirable outcomes, so I have broad and vague concerns towards all software being build. Hey, why can't people instead build software that contributes towards other broad and vague (but this time good!) outcomes instead?" ~~~ return0 I think its more nuanced than you make it to be. To me the message is "improve people's lives rather than disrupting them" ~~~ mseebach It basically is, just without bothering to elaborate on why disruption is bad, and what improvement actually means -- except in broad and vague terms. ------ jkot I think SV first needs to solve its own problems: transportation, infrastructure, homelessness, housing cost. ~~~ hueving SV has these costs because people come here to work for tech companies solving tech problems. A great way to eliminate those costs would be to force everyone to work on those lame problems with known technical solutions (at which point anyone looking for a technical rather than political challenge would just leave). The solution to housing problems is to build more housing. Period. There is nothing interesting there. The only reason it hasn't been done is because it's blocked politically by current home owners that "don't want the feel to change". ~~~ flubert >The solution to housing problems is to build more housing. Period. There is nothing interesting there. The only reason it hasn't been done is because it's blocked politically by current home owners that "don't want the feel to change". The interesting problem would seem to be convincing home owners to want the change. Here's one innovative perspective on the issue: [https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF](https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF) Certainly there could be others as well. It seems like a lot of people are locked-in to the position that nothing can change unless we get a political coalition together to force the existing homeowners into a situation they don't desire (without properly compensating them). What has been/could be done to make them partners in the growth instead? What kind of new financial structures/contracts could be invented to deal with the types of issues that have been traditionally solved with "eminent domain"? ~~~ hueving >What kind of new financial structures/contracts could be invented to deal with the types of issues that have been traditionally solved with "eminent domain"? True, there is room to innovate there, but that's mainly political work. As a software engineer I have next to 0 interest doing that. ~~~ flubert >that's mainly political work I was hoping to inspire thoughts of non-political solutions involving input and new ideas from economics, finance, sociology, etc.. Maybe some of these new ideas could come from someone with a software engineering background looking at things from a new perspective (networking theory, distributed systems, machine learning, etc.). ~~~ hueving Economics and sociology require politics for anything meaningful to happen. You might be able to develop some interesting financial instruments, but they will still require politics to get them adopted. What attracts me to tech is the fact that I can build things without regard to all of that. I'll admit it's selfish, but frankly life is too short to waste on something I don't care for. ~~~ flubert I guess I've failed to express myself adequately, I'm looking for ideas that minimize the politics needed to get them adopted. Like it doesn't take politics to propose a $1 trillion buyout of least expensive homes in SF, which you would then use as a starting point to get the zoning laws changed to enable higher density construction. ~~~ hueving >Like it doesn't take politics to propose a $1 trillion buyout of least expensive homes in SF, It takes politics to actually push the idea to anywhere beyond the back of a napkin exercise. Once you even go into the question of who should pay for it, that's politics. ------ dpierce9 I was almost hit by an Uber driver who shouldn't have been on the road so, while I love this new taxi stuff, I have first hand experience with real negative externalities. I was almost hit the day after a blizzard in Maryland this past January. My street had more than a foot of snow and was impassable for non-trucks. I was out walking my dog and there were dozens of other people playing and shoveling when an Uber driver in a small sedan came barreling down the street. I jumped out of the way while he went another 20 feet before he got stuck. I took a picture of his plate and yelled at him for driving recklessly. Before telling me to f-off he told me that 'if he slowed down he would have gotten stuck'. Being from a Northern state and knowing how to drive in snow, I was flabbergasted by the recknlessness of this. I contacted Uber and they assured me that despite endangering the health and safety of people, they gave the driver a stern talking. I haven't stopped using Uber (though I use Lyft more now) but it wouldn't surprise me if that driver was operating an unsuitable vehicle in an unsafe manner because of the incentives created by surge pricing. These are real risks and costs which are not born by Uber and we shouldn't stick our head in the sand or shout down those who point them out as Luddites. It also doesn't mean we should get rid of these services.

Ask HN: BountySplit.com: UBER + Affiliate Marketing - sharemywin Affiliate marketing for personal services? Earn 5-15% for referring others to post their project on bountysplit.com. Am I on to something? ====== sharemywin would 2 tiers be better or worse? visit [http://www.betterpro.net/](http://www.betterpro.net/) for an idea of the look and feel of the potential site.

If you die early, how will your children remember you? - zeristor https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-47334604 ====== zeristor A thoughtful idea, the article is about an app: RecordMeNow [http://recordmenow.org/](http://recordmenow.org/) that prompts someone with questions that most children would liked to hear answered when they're older. There's also a very good podcast version of the article: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072kvnc](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072kvnc)

What is the Answer to 99 of 100 Questions? - startupdaze http://startupdaze.com/post/804402 ====== youngnh F=ma

'Abstraction' is a Dirty Word - Impossible https://medium.com/@pjsdev/abstract-programmers-acada09df860 ====== warrenm When you don't know why you're using the term .. yes. But if you don't use abstraction, you get lost int he weeds in seconds Always use the proper level of abstraction for the scenario at hand

Ask HN: Is it reasonable to assume all skype calls are recorded by Microsoft? - nyxtom There&#x27;s been an uptick in privacy policy articles lately targeted at Google. At work we always joke about how Microsoft and the Gov. has access to all Skype video calls, but I&#x27;m actually wondering seriously whether this is the case. I seem to remember the architecture around skype is still P2P for voice and video calls? Their privacy policy doesn&#x27;t seem to preclude them from doing so. Thoughts? ====== rstuart4133 The architecture changed a while ago. It's no longer p2p: [https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes- from-p2p-3426522](https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes-from-p2p-3426522) It's probably not reasonable to believe all calls are recorded by Microsoft. The storage required would be huge, so there would need to be a business case to justify the expense. However, it almost certainly reasonable to assume Microsoft can and do record any call that interests them or any outsider they have to / want to please. ------ danieltillett Yes. I doubt they want to, but the US gov can be very insistent. ------ farseer Recording raw audio would not be feasible storage wise, however transcribing that audio and recording the resulting text is very much doable. ------ through That’s my running assumption and why I don’t use it. ------ Jedi72 I doubt it, recording all that audio needs a non-trivial amount of compute, which means $$$ ------ java-man yes.

High-risk video game venture has Rhode Island, Curt Schilling reeling - olegious http://boston.com/business/technology/articles/2012/05/18/high_risk_video_game_venture_has_rhode_island_curt_schilling_reeling/?page=full ====== Steko [http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/05/17/curt- schillin...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/05/17/curt-schilling- cash-and-credibility-crisis/KQPwPrKHUD4zJoTdT51C2I/story.html) _Schilling is a self-described conservative with a disdain for big government, which he considers intrusive and overbearing. He is a big believer in people helping themselves and solving their own problems. A couple of lines from an old post on Schilling’s blog, 38 pitches, sums it up: “If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. “A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.” Now Schilling is back with his hand out at a time when Rhode Island is dealing with double-digit unemployment and an economy so bad that many of its communities are in grave financial trouble. State officials are facing bigger problems than Schilling’s 38 Studios._ Christ what an asshole. ------ debacle Economic development agencies are, in my opinion, a terrible idea. If the people deciding where the money should go had any ability at all, they would be working in private investment. Instead, what you have are politically motivated nit-wits spending someone else's money on pipe dreams. Locally, we have IDAs (industrial development associations) who are allocating county grants to local organizations that aren't going to create value on the order of what the grants presuppose. This is a gross malappropriation of taxpayer money. With regards to Curt Schilling, you can't blame the guy. He's personally wealthy and wanted to make an MMO. That's the dream of almost any gamer out there, and Rhode Island was foolish enough to not do due diligence. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdoms_of_Amalur:_Reckoning#R...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdoms_of_Amalur:_Reckoning#Reception) If you look at the lineup, you have RA Salvatore, Todd MacFarlane, and Grant Kirkhope (the guy who wrote the score to Golden Eye and Perfect Dark). I haven't played the game itself, but anecdotally I've heard it's a great game but with a niche audience. You can create a successful game studio on that, but you can't create a billion dollar company. ~~~ rprospero > If the people deciding where the money should go had any ability at all, > they would be working in private investment. Just curious: do you think that economic development agencies would be improved if governments were willing to pay salaries equivalent to private investment firms, thus attracting better talent? ~~~ debacle See masterleep's comment. Governments will always be bad with money because they never are dealing with their own money. ~~~ jbooth Private organization stakeholders aren't usually dealing with their own money either, with similar results depending on the org. You know how much multi- million dollar business gets done over a few grand worth of Yankees tickets? This was a case of garden variety corruption, where the gov wasn't even getting kickbacks, he just liked the Red Sox, Schilling's a hero in New England, and he saw him as a fellow traveler conservative. If Schilling was going to George Clooney's fundraisers, this deal doesn't happen. ~~~ debacle Private investment management is usually performance based. ~~~ jbooth If you're going to restrict it to specifically the investment business, then yeah, typically. But pretty much anyone who purchases for a living is awash in kickbacks, the kind of stuff you'd be fired from a government for. FWIW I agree that the government shouldn't be in the investment game except for strategic investments by the federal government (ball bearings, green tech, DARPA, stuff like that). Certainly not video game companies. There is still a role for development agencies, doing stuff like helping streamline paperwork, advocating for sewer hookups, stuff like that. They shouldn't be investors. ------ bhickey The deal was pushed through by the former Governor Don Carcieri while he was a lame duck. The incoming governor, Chafee, tried unsuccessfully to block the transaction. Meanwhile the legislature was bamboozled into increasing the EDC's development pie by exactly the amount given to Schilling. Topping it off, Schilling is anti-government in his political disposition -- arguing for personal responsibility and hard work. Today 38 Studios failed to make payroll. When the dust settles I wouldn't be shocked to see some indictments come down. ------ mkramlich To Curt's credit he does/did own/run a board game company called Multi-Man Publishing which was responsible for reviving Advanced Squad Leader, considered by many to be a classic wargame. It's original owner was Avalon Hill which ultimately got bought by Hasborg where it languished before MMP licensed it. One of the really smart things MMP has done with ASL is create a series of very simple introductory subsets of ASL called Starter Kits. Many people love ASL but one of it's biggest flaws is that the total rules set is so large and complex, accumulated over many years, that historically it was very intimidating for potential new players. I don't think Curt directly designed the Starter Kits, but the fact that he was an owner and allowed and encouraged an environment and management team to do that, is a big positive mark in my book. But yeah, from the sound of the article, the way they went about trying to start that video game company was completely misguided. Backwards. Cart before the horse. They should have started small and scrappy, with a polished game prototype, with a real game designer behind it, that real users love on a small scale with modest placeholder graphics. Then incrementally flesh it out. Game industry is very much a hits-based market, with lots of fickle consumers. And very few of the people "designing" games are true game designers. ------ Impossible Teaser trailer of the game available here. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9nvnrP0j8U&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9nvnrP0j8U&feature=youtu.be) Disclaimer: I'm an employee. ~~~ cma Haha I like the Atlas Shrugged guy holding up the pillar--nice touch from a bunch of moochers. ------ aresant Democrats created the pool of "job creation" money and their Republican governor earmarked it for an idiotic venture. And yet, I keep hearing in this year's campaign messaging that "bipartisanship" and "bringing the parties together" is what the future of our government needs. ------ danso Well, at least he knows how to capture the Zeitgeist: [http://bostonglobe.com/business/2012/05/18/facebook-curt- sch...](http://bostonglobe.com/business/2012/05/18/facebook-curt-schilling- denies-paid-himself-back-with-money-thanks-supporters-ailing-studios-video- game-company/EnqdY2flmq0Bf55m4YvdRM/story.html) >Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling used his Facebook page to make his first public comments since the news that his Providence video game company, 38 Studios, would be unable to make payroll this week. ~~~ ricree Is there any word on what the game's development costs were? I was under the impression that it sold reasonably well, if not spectacularly so. ~~~ cpeterso Considering they have been working on the Copernicus MMO since 2006 and Kingdoms of Amalur in parallel, they have probably burned through a lot of money. Copernicus sounds cool, but I fear it will be another Daikatana. ~~~ mariusmg Amalur was done by a different studio (Big Huge Games) which they acquired 2 years ago. 38 Studio are working on a MMO for 6 years and nothing to show... ~~~ cpeterso _Convenient_ timing: 38 Studio just revealed their first video of _Project Copernicus_ content: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9nvnrP0j8U>

JavaScript best practices for simple conditioning - mukech http://codejets.com/javascript-best-practices-part-1/ ====== madhanraj Nice article.. one of the best reads..!! you can read this too.. :) it is useful [https://github.com/stevekwan/best- practices/blob/master/java...](https://github.com/stevekwan/best- practices/blob/master/javascript/best-practices.md) do you have any idea to reduce the bounce rate??

Move Your Money to Community Banks - robg http://moveyourmoney.info/ ====== midnightmonster Or go the next logical step and move your money to a credit union, where the dollars in your account are shares in the union. Unlike banks, the average credit union isn't built to screw you in every way they think they can get away with. Small examples: * When I first opened my accounts there was a (required by law, afaik) probationary period where checks took ages to clear. Since then, all my checks clear the moment I deposit them through the drive through. Typical checks are in the $1000-$6000 range, out of state. (My parents use the same credit union. My mom thinks she remembers a check deposit taking one business day--once.) * Transfers from PayPal seem to clear a day faster than they did with my bank. * Overdraft protection from my savings account is free and automatic. Being a part of a credit union is a different experience from depositing money at a bank. It's similar to the way you might feel different even about some big, "faceless" corporation if it was one you'd chosen to make a significant (to you, if not them) investment in. ~~~ fishercs 1\. The bank took longer to clear the check because it would have to send the check back to the bank where the check was first drawn, this is what we call float.. your credit union probably had a system in place that gives you a temporary "credit" until that check officially clears.. this is all pretty much null and void after 9/11, most banks can just send an image of the check eliminating your float. 2\. you're two other points are mute really, you can find banks with similar advantageous pricing structures; the advantages of credit unions are they don't have to pay the outrageous taxes federal banks are paying, this helps keep their lending rates down, the important thing to remember though is a credit union is not an FDIC insured thing, if it goes under you're screwed. the nice thing is, its hard for a community driven thing to go under, but if all the lenders start short selling good luck. ~~~ midnightmonster 1\. I can't tell if you're saying that most banks now also credit my account instantly (none of the three I've used post-9/11 did), or if you're saying that getting access to my deposits instantly isn't _really_ an advantage because... ? 2\. Credit unions are insured by the NCUA, a federal agency backed by the full faith and credit of the US Government just as the FDIC, and in the same amounts with the same rules about accounts. ~~~ fishercs this will vary with different institutions.. If you deposit money into an account you will have access to it instantly with most banks, unless they don't do in office processing or have some sort of memo credit system in place. I can't think of many that don't. Credit unions aren't available to everyone tho and are still limited in lending as opposed to any fdic bank. ------ Apreche Yes, there are many advantages to a community bank or credit union. However, there is one problem that outweighs all those benefits. No ATMS! If you get an account at a huge bank like Chase, Bank of America, or HSBC, there are branches and ATMs everywhere you go. A community bank is fine if you're the kind of person who stays in one place and never moves. If you travel a lot, a local bank is useless. What would be nice is if we could get the benefits of a local bank, but have branches all over the country/world. ~~~ andrewcooke there's a comment on metafilter addresing this - [http://www.metafilter.com/87921/If-Potter-gets-a-hold-of- thi...](http://www.metafilter.com/87921/If-Potter-gets-a-hold-of-this- building-and-loan-there-will-never-be-another-decent-house-built-in-this- town#2883705) _Lots of these banks are part of an ATM consortium called SUM, and so you don't really lose out on the main benefit of the big banks. If we can find a SUM ATM (they're everywhere) then there's no fee for using it._ ------ jacquesm Small banks fail too, they won't make the national news but they definitely do. This is an interesting list of failed banks: <http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html> Especially if you look at the years and the number of failures in those years. 2009 definitely does not look good, more than 100 in one year. ~~~ robg No doubt. But isn't a big part of that in 2009 because local banks were encouraged to take bigger risks than they normally would have? I mean, if they didn't have mortgages to bundle for Wall Street, would their more conservative policies have helped them to survive? ~~~ jacquesm Possibly, but not certainly. Small banks fail for a variety of reasons, not in the least because of their inability to absorb a single larger loss. Traditionally the 'credit union' is the bank form with the lowest rate of failure. ------ Tichy It was everybody's greed, not just the banks. If I despise something about human societies, it is their tendency for scapegoating... ~~~ chasingsparks Our political tradition sets great store by the generalized symbol of evil. This is the wrongdoer whose wrongdoing will be taken by the public to be the secret propensity of a whole community or class. We search avidly for such people, not so much because we wish to see them exposed and punished as individuals, but because we cherish the resulting political discomfort of their friends. To uncover an evil man among the friends of one's foes had long been a recognized method of advancing one's political fortunes. However, in recent times the technique has been greatly improved and refined by the added firmness with which the evil of the evildoer is now attributed to friends, acquaintances, and all who share his way of life. \--John Kenneth Galbraith (concerning vilification of Wall Street following the '29 crash) ------ encoderer I would echo a little and say drive past the banks and begin a relationship with a credit union. And if you can join the USAA orr NFCU, then definitely do. (And you may be eligible, I was.) There was a time when lending decisions were made by a loan office with some thoughtfulness. You won't get that at any large bank now. Now it's a computer that parses your AGI and Fico and doesn't know you, your values, or your creditworthiness. (And Fico is ripe with edge cases, it's certainly not the whole story on credit worthiness). But at a CU, you'll be able to sit at a desk with an underwriter. Yes, your stats will matter, but they will take into account the whole picture of a borrower. ------ pragmatic Where are the hard facts to show the rate of failure of "local" banks vs national banks? Some of the banks listed (for me) were part of large international conglomerates? That's better? Also, having worked for large banks (one of the largest) and then in software sold to small "local" community banks and credit unions, I know that you are sacrificing online features with the the little banks. Most of them can't have the online convenience features that the large ones do. And don't think that the "local" banks are any less "greedy" or "evil" than large banks. The reason this little banks stay in business is that they are _incredibly_ profitable. They charge fees just as high (overdraft fees keep them in business) as the larger banks but don't have the regulators up their butt like the larger banks. Did you ever wonder why banks offered free checking? It ain't to upsell you into car loans. It's in the hopes that you habitually overdraft and then pay the enormous fees. There's a reason the big banks print everything in multiple languages. They love immigrant customers who are not financially literate. Stand in a bank in an immigrant neighborhood sometime and listen to the tellers explain to people why they now owe $200 in overdraft fees and their account is empty. Having said that, credit unions are your best bet. Again if you can sacrifice a lot of convenience features you get for "free" with the larger banks. Disclosure: I still bank with a large evil bank. Too much hassle to switch for too little benefit (if fact negative benefit because I lose features). ~~~ fishercs local banks have to be more scrupulous with whom they lend too, this is why they're often more successful and a recommended choice right now. not everyone gets a loan if your bank only generates 400 million in combined assets and revenue. ------ andrew1 From the 'Story' page on the site: 'The filmmaker at the table reminded the others of the story told in the classic film It’s A Wonderful Life — a tale about a small banker, played by Jimmy Stewart, who almost gets crushed by a big banker. In the end, though, the community rallies around the small bank and helps save it.' Or looking at it another way, through the incompetencies of staff the bank loses a fortune and has to be bailed out by the public. Is there a modern day remake in the offing?! ------ somecanuck My family uses a truly faceless bank -- President's Choice Financial. There are no physical offices for this bank other than the kiosks inside of Loblaw's grocery stores. If you need to pick up money order or something similar, you go to a CIBC. However, I do not see the benefit of a credit union or community bank. My current bank offers: - No monthly or annual fee. - Online banking. - Free cheques. - Unlimited debit transactions. - Reward points for purchasing groceries with our debit card. - Instant availability of deposited cheques, up to several thousand dollars. What does a credit union or community bank have to offer to me, considering that I have no need for a friendly personality or face to talk to? I am the type of guy who prefers the self-checkout lines. (Sorry for the edits, poor formatting)

Sysadmin mistakes start-ups make - polvi https://www.cloudkick.com/blog/2009/oct/20/three-start-up-sysadmin-mistakes/ ====== DrJokepu Here's one we made recently: Purchasing an array of hard drives (for storage servers) and not making sure that not all of them are from the same batch. Since they were made in the same batch, they had the same defects and when they failed, they failed one after each other in a very short interval. Since all of them failed, RAID didn't help, we had to restore the day-old offline backup. ~~~ michaelbuckbee That isn't something I'd ever thought about until now. Would it make sense to use drives from more than one company as they would very different failure characteristics? ~~~ blasdel It's a terrible idea to mix and match drive models, because they'll have drastically different _performance_ characteristics, and if you're lucky you'll only get a little worse than the lowest common denominator on all axes. What quality OEMs do is make sure they never ship you drives from the same manufacturing batch in one enclosure. ~~~ DTrejo How do you make sure to buy from a quality OEM? ------ jrockway Fork is actually a very fast system call. It never blocks, and (on Linux), only involves copying a very small amount of bookkeeping information. If you exec right after the fork, there is basically no overhead. However, forking a new shell to parse "mv foo bar" is more expensive than just using the rename system call. And it's easier to check for errors, and so on. SQLite is also not as slow as people think it is; you can easily handle 10s of millions of requests per day with it. If your application's semantics require table locks, MySQL and Postgres are not going to magically eliminate competition for locks. It's just that they both pick very weak locking levels by default. (They run fast, but make it easy to corrupt your data. Incidentally, I think they do this not for speed, but so that transactions never abort. Apparently that scares people, even though it's the whole point of transactions. </rant>.) Most of my production apps are SQLite or BerekelyDB, and they perform great. I am not Google, however. ~~~ teej > SQLite is also not as slow as people think it is; you can easily handle 10s > of millions of requests per day with it Scaling relational databases to the point of 10s of millions of requests is extremely non-trivial. Unless you can show me personally or can show me evidence otherwise, don't make this claim. You're doing a disservice to the people that have worked countless hours to eke every last millisecond of performance out of MySQL and Postgres. ~~~ jrockway 10 million per day is about 100 per second. SQLite performs about this quickly. I wrote a test script and it did 125 (unindexed) lookups per second. Then I ran two of these tests at the same time, and the rate stayed about the same. I have 8 cores, so I made 8 processes, and it was the same. 125 requests/second * 8 * 86400 seconds/day = 86_400_000 requests per day. I added another thread writing as quickly as possible to the mix (7 readers, 1 writer), and this brought the read rate down to about 45/reads per second per thread. Still more than 10 million per day, so technically I am right. Also, I don't doubt that MySQL and Postgres (and BDB) are both significantly faster than this. It's just that SQLite is not going to guarantee "instant failure" of your project, as the article implies. (One thing to note -- every time you type a character in Firefox's address bar, you are doing an SQLite query. It is Fast Enough for many, many applications.) ~~~ gstar That -is- fast, but I still have trouble reconciling that deep down in my computer, a human readable SQL query gets built, and then another process parses that SQL. Seems so wasteful building and then parsing a human readable string for something that's happening on the same machine. I know nothing of SQLites's internals, but wouldnt it make more sense to parse the query once and then store a compiled version of the query for subsequent lookups? Like you might do with a regexp? ~~~ azim Yes, This is known as a prepared statement. You compile a parametrized statement once, then execute it as many times as you like with different arguments. Also, SQLite, unlike most other databases, is an embedded database which does everything in-process rather than invoking multiple processes. ------ peterwwillis The memory use is not accurate unless you take shared pages into account. Copy-on-write will make it look like each apache child is using 40MB, when really it's only 10MB private RSS. Use a RSS-calculating script (<http://psydev.syw4e.info/new/misc/meminfo.pl>) to determine the close-to- real memory use. If you don't calculate your maximum memory use correctly you will run into swap with traffic peaks. Also keep in mind that swap is a _good_ thing. Is your app constantly cycling children? This isn't going to allow it to move unused/shared memory into swap. Don't ignore memory leaks by reducing your max requests per child. The forking thing is more of the same. Copy-on-write means it's not going to balloon your memory unless some function turns that shared rss into private. It isn't something that you want to do a lot of, though. ~~~ Periodic This stood out to me as well. I like the script to actually calculate real usage. Modern operating systems are smarter than I am when it comes to memory management. What you don't want is to have anything you use more than once a minute in swap, and preferably only the stuff you don't plan on using for an hour (i.e. not any time soon). That probably means you want your main application and web server in memory all the time. If there are pieces of it that are unused and you're hitting a resource cap then you have something mis-configured. RAM is also dirt cheap right now, making it often easier to add RAM than to optimize slightly sloppy code. ------ SwellJoe One of the most common problems we see is DNS misconfiguration. It seems most folks just haven't read the grasshopper book. If you're doing anything on the Internet, you _need_ a basic understanding of DNS. Once you grasp the fundamentals, most DNS problems become completely transparent, but I've seen people spend _weeks_ trying to solve DNS problems due to lack of understanding. ~~~ omouse Could you name that book? Do you have know of any other books people should read for sys-adminning? ~~~ sparky DNS and Bind (now in its 3rd edition) by Liu, Albitz, and Loukides. It's an O'Reilly book. <http://www.amazon.com/DNS-BIND-Cricket-Liu/dp/1565925122> ~~~ nixme Amazon shows it's actually in its 5th edition now: <http://www.amazon.com/DNS-BIND-5th-Cricket-Liu/dp/0596100574> ~~~ sparky Good call :) Too late to edit :( ------ abalashov In my experience of the most common mistakes is the failure to realise that on pretty much all Linux distros, services like Apache and MySQL come conservatively tuned. This is deliberate; it means a DoS or out-of-control process within one of those domains is unlikely to take out the entire server, because there's a hard limit on consumption of memory, CPU, child processes, threads, etc. However, this default configuration needs to be tuned to allow you to take advantage of the hardware - if you have generous hardware. Otherwise, you will wonder why your web sites are extremely unresponsive, yet the server load stands at something relatively unimpressive. I found this out the first time a blog post on one of my servers got digg'd. ------ michaelbuckbee I'd guess the real number one mistake is insufficient paranoia about backups. I know lots of companies doing TDD but that have never done a full test restore from their backups. ~~~ gaius The easiest way to do this is to make your backups the mechanism by which you refresh your Dev/QA environment from Production. It means your Ops team are very nearly doing a DR exercise every week. ~~~ simonw I'd never heard that advice before - sounds like a great idea. ------ tptacek This was a great article, but I ended it wondering whether they either (a) knew what a system call was (until the end, I thought maybe they meant a system() shell-out) or (b) realize how many system calls a vanilla request/response cycle incurs. ------ aristus I disagree with 1.3. "Serving static content is the easiest possible task for any web server." Yes, but keeping connections open for slow clients (esp with KeepAlive on) is not a good use of your 500MB Mongrel process' time. On the other hand, KeepAlive is a handy thing to have. Using a proxy like nginx or varnish to serve static files (and even dynamic data) if you have the proper KeepAlive and Nagle bits flipped can save you a _lot_ of server resources at the application layer. ~~~ staunch It's almost always a bad idea to use anything other than a non-blocking/async server to handle static content. I think it's simpler/easier (maybe faster) to serve content from a separate sub-domain (static.site.com or whatever). Using a reverse proxy works too, but unless you're caching dynamic content it's probably no benefit and it's less efficient. ~~~ andrewtj A good reverse proxy will buffer client and server side so that your heavy app can be available to serve the next request whilst the light proxy feeds the page back to a slow client. Under certain circumstances serving static files from separate hostnames can be beneficial as HTTP clients are supposed to limit the number of simultaneous connections per hostname. ------ julio_the_squid Yep, #1 happened to me the other day. We hit our Apache server limit of 256 and the site slowed to a crawl. I'm not really sure what was causing the load to be like 50-90, but requests were quite delayed waiting for an open process (keepalive was at 5 secs). Indeed, my first idea was indeed to install nginx for images really quick. However, I have no experience with nginx. Thankfully, we had a spare server and I offloaded the images to there for now... Throwing more hardware at the problem usually works. ------ ajross FTA: _However, sqlite should never be used in production. It is important to remember that sqlite is single flat file, which means any operation requires a global lock_ I don't know jack about sqlite's locking architecture or scalability, but this statement is just silly. There are a conceptually infinite number of ways to make fine-grained locking work on a single file, both within a single process, a single host, or across a network. Maybe the author is thinking fcntl() locking is somehow the only option. I guess the corrolary to this article has to be "Don't let your startup's sysadmins diagnose development-side issues." ~~~ pquerna SQLite locking: <http://www.sqlite.org/lockingv3.html> """ An EXCLUSIVE lock is needed in order to write to the database file. Only one EXCLUSIVE lock is allowed on the file and no other locks of any kind are allowed to coexist with an EXCLUSIVE lock. In order to maximize concurrency, SQLite works to minimize the amount of time that EXCLUSIVE locks are held. """ But compared to something like MySQL w/ InnoDB (or postgres, or Cassandra, or BerkeleyDB), which all have something closer to Row Level or Page Level locking, SQLite's concurrency for server side applications is a serious deficiency. Yes, there are lots of ways to have fine grained locking, SQLite just doesn't do them. ~~~ silentbicycle Like many of SQLite's other quirks, this is because SQLite is designed to accommodate embedded usage. ------ absconditus How are the last two system administration problems? ------ rythie This seems like an odd section of sysadmin mistakes - I would have thought there are some other ones being made more often. ~~~ thwarted Especially since the third one is a developer mistake that, as a sys admin and developer, I've had to point out to developers not to do -- but for security reasons, not because fork is oh-so-super expensive (even though it can be). Also, there is no "system" system call. "system" is a library call that forks and execs a shell to evaluate and execute a string. Having a sys admin that doesn't know the difference may be the biggest sys admin mistake you could make. There are a lot of library wrappers for system calls, but these are documented in section 2 of the man pages as system calls. ------ bcl I'd say their biggest mistake is usually not hiring a sysadmin who also has development experience (or developers without sysadmin experience). I've found that my knowledge in both realms has been invaluable in determining how to design the infrastructure and how to write the code. ------ patio11 _If you fork inside an app server, such as mod_python, you will fork the entire parent process (apache!). This could happen by calling something like os.system("mv foo bar") from a python application._ I nominate this post as the most distressingly important bit of information I've ever received at 2:43 AM in the morning. Now the question: what can I do in Ruby to avoid the four calls a second or so I'm currently making to system(big_command_to_invoke_imagemagick) ? ~~~ polvi The solution to use an image processing library such as RMagick, <http://rmagick.rubyforge.org/> ~~~ tptacek Calling into RMagick/ImageMagick from inside the request/response cycle is probably even worse than shelling out, because ImageMagick does grievous damage to your runtime. ~~~ polvi I guess it all depends how you design it and what you are doing. I would have to agree with others, the out of request cycle image processing solutions are definitely the right way to go overall. ------ toisanji hmm, I have a hard time understanding why anyone would try to use sqlite in production unless they explicitly wanted to? ~~~ anApple Simpler to use (no external program to start and monitor) and to backup (just copy the sqlite file) ------ joshOiknine Personally I don't think we would ever run into those issues. A. we don't have other servers to switch over to B. We are using MySQL for testing and development and C. we don't like what happens when we make system calls for within a web app. forget about forking. ------ durana Take #1 and generalize it to the mistake of trying to fix a problem without really understanding what the problem is. This has to be the most common mistake I've seen in the sysadmin world. ------ c00p3r Is this a example of a knowledge level of modern sysadmin? If so, we're in trouble. =) Sysadmin should be able to think in terms of data flows, which means memory management, data partitioning, and network stack usage, able to put different types of data into different kinds of storage, and understand the role of cache and how data should be access. Packages are just a tools.

Macie: Automatically Discover, Classify, and Secure Content at Scale - forrestbrazeal https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/launch-amazon-macie-securing-your-s3-buckets/ ====== avip Dear aws, Could you guys take it easy for a moment with spawning new weird services like horny hamsters, reflect on the ~372 you already have, and fix some aspects of them? How about letting me add basic auth to S3 or CloudFront? How about non-expiring signed s3 urls? How about restricted access to api-gateway? Hey, how about fixing Athena to stop throwing random errors, and actually support the fully featured presto syntax? I could extend this list with 64 items more without even opening my dedicated aws complains notebook. ~~~ alexbilbie You can implement basic auth using Lambda@Edge. You could also implement your own non-expiring signed URLs with Lambda@Edge too. ~~~ spaceseaman _rolls eyes_ Is there some reason programmers feel this need to bring up workarounds when I'm looking for an actual solution? If I could count how many answers on StackOverflow are just "well if you use JQuery..." or "Well if you use Boost...". Address the point the person you're responding to is making, and answer only the questions they are asking. Making assumptions just wastes people's time. I understand you're just trying to help, but it comes across as really condescending. "You _should_ be doing this you pleb!" is how I always read these types of responses in my head, and it's really frustrating because often-times I'm already aware of whatever workaround you've mentioned, have already tried it, and know it's not suitable. It's doubly frustrating when you're specifically looking for the solution that's not the workaround. ~~~ IanCal There's no need to be like that. > Is there some reason programmers feel this need to bring up workarounds when > I'm looking for an actual solution? It _is_ a solution! It's not the same solution you want, but it's an _actual solution to the problem you described_. > Address the point the person you're responding to is making, and answer only > the questions they are asking. They are addressing the point, and " answer only the questions they are asking." is a dreadful idea to me. So often people are asking how to solve a problem in a specific way, but there's no good reason to be limiting themselves in that way. Given that they currently can't easily solve their problem in that specific way, it suggests that if there is a nice solution they are likely looking in the wrong place. > Making assumptions just wastes people's time. I feel like _not_ sharing a solution because you think that the person you're trying to help has some unexpected extra > is how I always read these types of responses in my head, and it's really > frustrating because often-times I'm already aware of whatever workaround > you've mentioned, have already tried it, and know it's not suitable. It's > doubly frustrating when you're specifically looking for the solution that's > not the workaround. Then you should make it more explicit what you've already tried. We're not inside your head, and many people _haven 't_ tried these things before. This is a good guide: [http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart- questions.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) I didn't realise lambda@edge was a thing, or that I could use it to solve these problems. If I'd asked the question, these would have helped me. Why should someone refrain from writing a concise and polite response helping me purely because they think I may have tried that before and it will annoy me? > "You should be doing this you pleb!" is how I always read these types of > responses in my head, Then you may benefit from trying to work on this. Their reply has none of this snark or rudeness at all, and is simply listing some ways of solving the problem. You are the one that added this mentally, and then it annoys you. You are adding something yourself which then annoys you. Go back and read what they said. They very simply explained that AWS let you do those things using lambda@edge. There was absolutely no reason to reply so rudely. ~~~ mseebach So, I totally agree with you on the tone of the GP, and that workarounds are worthwhile to share, but I feel like they have a point. I feel the problem is more pronounced in the Javascript/webdev community (caveat: I'm recently dabbling in web front end development after a good number of years in Java-land) - the willingness to throw a poorly understood workaround or npm-incantation out there ("it usually works if I.."), rather than trying to actually get at the root of the problem is frustrating. I don't just want to make it work, I want to understand why it didn't before. It seems, from still shallow observation, that the community (such as a singular community exists) has an ethos of doing whatever to make it work and moving on. Sometimes the root of the issue is a fundamental limitation that you need to work around, and workarounds are definitely useful in those cases, but they are definitely frustrating when they aren't accompanied by reasonably precise diagnosis of the problem they are working around. ------ pavel_lishin > _once your data has been classified by Macie, it assigns each data item a > business value_ ... and a thousand startup founders started the process, looked at the results, put their heads down on their desks, and wept quietly. ~~~ koolba I don't get it. Are they crying because they have a ton of unsecured PII or because all their data is worthless? ~~~ kevinr Yes. ~~~ abrookewood Would you like Coffee or Tea? Yes. ~~~ ben_jones Whiskey or Vodka? ------ SadWebDeveloper Is there an actual use for this? seems like its another useless service from the aws team instead on focusing on improving their interfaces, api's and pricing options. ~~~ openasocket Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and related things, mostly. Like alerting you that you just wrote a bunch of private customer data to a world-readable bucket. Or that some random employee is downloading all of your privileged and confidential reports, which could mean their credentials have been compromised. Very very nice if you have data stored in S3 that you really want to keep secure. DISCLAIMER: work for AWS, have met and talked with the Macie team on several occasions. Opinions on here are my own ~~~ SadWebDeveloper Still this seems like a poorly managed enterprise, probably a lazy cto or lack of a ciso, personally m kinda spektic that these services actually offer value in a well managed enterprise, specially if you work under the assumption that everything that it's on the internet or well "the cloud" it's by nature inherently insecure. Let's see how long those "valley people" keep milking the "AI", "Deep learning", "Machine Learning" hype. ------ QUFB Not cheap: [https://aws.amazon.com/macie/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/macie/pricing/) After first GB, $5 per GB processed by the content classification engine ~~~ abrookewood That's $5 once for each GB, not $5 per GB per month. Seems reasonable to me compared to the cost of implementing a DLP solution. ------ sah2ed > When Jeff and I heard about this service, we both were curious on the > meaning of the name Macie. Of course, Jeff being a great researcher looked > up the name Macie and found that the name Macie has two meanings. I somehow initially parsed the author's mention of Jeff as Jeff Bezos but soon realized she was referring to Jeff Bar, chief evangelist of AWS. ------ tucif I don't think their svm classifier would work over encrypted data, so if a service stores data encrypted at rest is this useful at all? ~~~ eropple Most people using S3 are encrypting their data with KMS. Haven't looked, but if it's like every other S3 consumer, you can write a trust policy for Macie. ------ dfc _> The first meaning of Macie that was found, said that that name meant “weapon”._ Is macie a french word for weapon? I'm familiar with the English word "mace" that is a weapon but not macie. ------ leastangle I ask myself how many people are storing _potential_ sensitive information without application level encryption so that AWS decides to build such tool... slightly distressing. ------ porker I don't get it. In what scenarios would this be useful? ------ sandGorgon how do people train and build a service like this ?

New Wyoming bill forbids utilities from using renewables - xkcd-sucks http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2017/0119/New-Wyoming-bill-forbids-utilities-from-using-renewables ====== ghouse The coal industry is one of, if not the largest industry in Wyoming. As wind and solar become the least-cost source of new generation, the economic viability of coal generation is threatened. Rather than allow the free market to select the least-cost solution, so-called Republicans who think government shouldn't pick winers, are picking winners. ~~~ diogenescynic And yet if Wyoming wanted to grow its economy, they could add more ski resorts, winter sports facilities, hotels, and other tourist related businesses. They are doubling down on the wrong ideas. ~~~ cloakandswagger Do you think those blue collar coal workers are going to be amenable to switching careers so they can service wealthy ski resort visitors? All while making much less money? On a personal note, I've always been troubled by the over-representation of unnecessary services and useless gadgets in the US economy. Luxury ski resorts and $400 cookie baking devices (with connected smartphone app) are not noble products, and they demoralize the workers who provide/build them. I know this might not be a popular sentiment to those on HN who Uber home from their San Francisco office to pick up their Blue Apron delivery and pre-order their new iDevice, but there it is. ~~~ narrowrail As someone that lives in the region (and used to live in Jackson), resorts can be quite lucrative. Black lung is not a great condition to acquire. My ex was a bartender pulling down $400/night. The service economy is basically a sales training job where connections can be made, and advancement is a possibility. I'm a telecommuter, but I know many people that live/work in these areas and do ok. It should be a known cost to living in such great environments with heavy tourism. ~~~ username223 You know service workers both living _and_ working in Jackson, and doing okay? Those lucky few! Jackson refuses to build more affordable housing (because tourists and rich locals think poor people are gross). Therefore you see many of the people who work there commute daily from Idaho, and many of the seasonal employees camp out in the national forest behind the Strategic Elk Reserve. Jackson is a terrible model (Vail is similarly bad). That said, coal and fracking seem like a bad idea for Wyoming's future. It has plenty of wind and empty land. ------ bediger4000 How is this not the kind of regulations/laws/red tape oft decried by conservative, free market politicians? How is this not picking a winner, another practice oft decried by conservative, free market politicians? Is this just a case of "free market for me, but merchantilism for thee"? ~~~ gaius Where are solar panels made? Are they being dumped on the market? </rhetorical> ~~~ pjc50 Why ignore renewables that are being subsidised by _another country_? ~~~ cloakandswagger There's a reason anti-dumping laws exist. ------ diafygi I work in renewables, and I encourage this community to not to ridicule people in Wyoming for their very clear majority choice. In their point of view, they are making the best choice for their interests, so calling them stupid only deepens their resolve. If you want renewables in Wyoming, there are four options (in order from most effective to least): (a) Move to Wyoming and outvote the existing population (it's not crowded, so it wouldn't take much). (b) Donate money and time on marketing, education, and advocacy campaigns to try and convince people in Wyoming to your point of view (somewhat difficult to do as an outsider, but not impossible). (c) Boycott fossil fuels from Wyoming (very difficult since they self consume a lot). (d) Wait for the existing generation to die and hope the next generation makes decisions in your favor. Currently, it sounds like HN has settled on option (d), but if your really want change, (a) and (b) are the things that work the best. ~~~ the8472 > (a) Move to Wyoming and outvote the existing population Pollution and global warming are not a local effects. Therefore it should not be solely their decision. It should be regulated at a national or international level instead since it affects everyone. And well, obama tried but it didn't last. So we should escalate: (e) The international community takes action and imposes trade sanctions on wyoming or america. And if that fails resorts to an invasion. ~~~ cloakandswagger >And if that fails resorts to an invasion It always astonishes me when statists are so clear about their violent propensities. ~~~ istjohn Destroying the earth is violence. ~~~ cloakandswagger Let me see if I understand: Industries are destroying the environment, which supports human life, and you want to stop this presumably because human life has some intrinsic value. Your answer to this is to use the force of the state to destroy those industries, and if they resist you will literally kill the people opposing you. Do those lives have less value than others? Or is this a twisted greater good type of thing, where you think climate change is happening so quickly that we should jump to dropping bombs to stop it? (hint: it's not) ~~~ JoeAltmaier Really? You've not been paying attention then. Further the risk exists that we cross a tipping point before we even know it. There are sensible arguments for stopping polluting industry now, by any means necessary. Glib rationalization isn't a counter-argument. Science would be, if we had good enough models to know. ------ bwb WTF, I used to be closer to a lot of the republican ideology, but their move over the last 10 years to be so anti-science, anti-fact, anti-thinking it is repulsive. They used to stand for letting people live and not be bothered by the government, now they try to control women's vaginas and so much other shit that bugs me. ~~~ rhizome _They used to stand for letting people live and not be bothered by the government_ When was this? ~~~ bwb The 80s maybe? ~~~ kelukelugames Uh... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority) ------ dmichulke _When the wind of change blows, some men build walls and some build windmills_ \- Chinese proverb ------ anon1253 Oh downvote me into oblivion. But whatever the hell you're doing US, it's not good. It's not good for you, it's not good for the planet. It's not good for your citizens, it's not good for humans all around the planet. With all your overseas missions to "protect freedom" or some other utterly irrelevant excuse to satiate your military-industrial complex, you fail to do the one thing that might actually help. Progress. Progress beyond your dependence on fossil fuels, progress beyond the need to entice war, slavery, destruction for those who hold those mineral resources you value so dearly. Just think for a second: however much is left, however destructive it might be to the planet to extract and burn it(losses beyond imagination included), there is still a finite amount of it. You could be the front-runners in a revolution never seen before. The front-runners in an economy liberated from the need to see energy as "scarce". You're stuck in a mindset. "Energy is scarce". It's not, it's abundant. It's /everywhere/. Solar, Geothermal, Wind and Hydro-electric are not some hippy post-fact climate change conspiracy: they can and will provide you with unlimited and free energy. Just /think/ for just a second what that would do to your infrastructure. Grow food in deserts? Done. Free transport across the world? Done. Virtually free drinking water through ocean desalination? Done. Massive reductions in prices for food and other necessities? Done. But no, you want to live in a world where energy is scarce and you're the sole "protector" of its use and freedom. Cite "jobs lost" or whatever you can think of to protect your bubble; but this path you're on is not sustainable. ~~~ webkike Who are you talking to? All of the citizens of the US? The federal government? This is a state of Wyoming bill. Here's an analogy: You're basically directing criticism towards the European Union for something a member nation has done; the whole is not any individual part. You seem to have some legitimate criticisms of the US government or the country as a whole but this comment section is not the place for it. ~~~ anon1253 That's fair. But I do, and can, direct criticism towards the EU for one of its member states as well (however shaky the EU might be at this moment). It might not particularly effective, given, but in my book it's still valid criticism. Maybe it's my upbringing, I don't know, but I'd like to think about 'citizens of the world'. Pollution, innovations, technology and energy know, and should not, know boundries. While this particular bit was about Wyoming there have been similar stances in other states about taxing or otherwise limiting renewable energy. At some point it's necessary to abstract. To find the "general" in the particulars. It's a touchy subject, but maybe it's time to abstract this to the federal level or even higher? ------ padseeker Remember when the state legislatures in "Conservative" "Republican" states like Texas voted to ban Tesla sales in their state? Lots of people in Wyoming and Texas vote "conservative" and conservatives are supposed to advocate for the free market. And those people claim to be "conservative" want capitalism and the free market UNTIL the free market threatens to put their jobs at risk. Maybe they were never really conservative in first place? ------ Hondor It's not forbidden, it just has a ~10% tariff (fine). $10 per MWh compared to the current price of $120 per MWh. If solar or wind ends up actually cheaper than coal, it'll probably be by more than that 10% so it'll still be economical to use them. Furthermore, the fine doesn't apply to exported electricity, which is most of it: "Wyoming sends two-thirds of the electricity it generates to nearby states" [1] [1] [https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.cfm?sid=WY](https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.cfm?sid=WY) ~~~ philipkglass $120 per MWh (well, $115.60) is the _residential retail_ price in Wyoming, not the price that electricity producers get at point of generation: [https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf...](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a) The wholesale price a new American wind farm gets for its output in a region with good resources is maybe $30-$40/MWh. (Or $40-$50 if the wind farm lasts 25 years and collects the federal Production Tax Credit for its first 10 years.) The extra $10 in taxes makes a bigger difference at the wholesale level. ------ Touche Missing from this article is the justification being given. They must have one, what is it? ~~~ woofyman “Wyoming is a great wind state and we produce a lot of wind energy. We also produce a lot of conventional energy, many times our needs. The electricity generated by coal is amongst the least expensive in the country. We want Wyoming residences to benefit from this inexpensive electrical generation. We do not want to be averaged into the other states that require a certain [percentage] of more expensive renewable energy.” Edit: quote is from Bill sponsor ~~~ noobermin Are there any Wyoming people here who can comment on the feasibility of this passing? This is crony capitalism, government choosing "winners and losers", at its finest. ~~~ jessaustin Not from Wyoming, but this seems like a classic disagreement between the average state resident (or rather, the industry that has purchased her legislator) and some exceptional municipality. Since it's Wyoming I'm guessing Jackson Hole. Probably they wanted to have something nice to brag about to coastal rich people conflicted about vacationing in a red state, so they were going to require local ratepayers to purchase some percentage of "clean" energy. Outlawing this sort of local arrangement is just the sort of thing that state governments do. We've seen a lot of state laws outlawing public internet service, for example. ~~~ panzagl People downvoting you don't understand how Western states work- California money has a pretty big effect in the big square states. ~~~ jessaustin They might also have assumed that I _approve_ of states interfering with municipalities this way. No way: I'm for complete decentralization. Of course that means I'm also against municipalities decreeing that one type of power will be available rather than another, but I figure people can work at a local level or vote with their feet rather than enlisting state or federal interference. ------ gumby This is not as bad as it sounds. In fact the answer is in the article: > Wyoming already generates more electricity than it consumes. > The state already has wind farms, and a 3,000-megawatt installation is under construction in Carbon County. People will still build wind farms, they'll just export the electricity. This is no different from Germany going "nuclear free" (they still import energy from nuclear plants in France and the Czech Republic). California is a leader in green energy, of which quite a bit comes from hydro of which CA has almost none...but Washington does. Etc etc. Still, grandstanding does send a message and this one is a stupid one. ------ CalChris Meanwhile China is shutting down coal plants. [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/energy- environme...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/energy- environment/china-coal.html) I know that Utah coal is exported to China since it gets shipped by rail to Port of Stockton. A local developer was trying to build a coal terminal in Oakland (Oakland Army Base which is basically attached to the Port of Oakland) but the city (mayor+sups) wisely shut that down. It is insanely stupid to have a coal terminal upwind of a populated area. ~~~ masonic China is shutting down coal plants No, they are cutting back on some _new plant construction_ , as that article says. ~~~ CalChris No, they're shutting down coal plants. Bloomberg: Beijing to Shut All Major Coal Power Plants to Cut Pollution [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-24/beijing-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-24/beijing- to-close-all-major-coal-power-plants-to-curb-pollution) ~~~ masonic That was only four, only in Beijing, and 22 months ago. The plants in the OP's story are what I referred to. They probably will decommission coal plants over time as more solar capacity comes online, probably east to west. ------ rosser As terrible as this is, at least they can continue selling their renewables out of state. The winds in Wyoming are incredible (google image search: "Wyoming wind sock"; it's less an exaggeration than you'd think). The Fine Article also points out that ~90% of WY's electricity already comes from non-renewables (though, for whatever reason, they count hydro amongst those). Net, this isn't exactly changing the status quo for WY. ~~~ bonzini Since all I knew of Wyoming is "Yellowstone", would geothermal be feasible there? It's renewable and cheap whenever possible. ------ startDaemons The bill was (according to it's creators) designed to make the utilities reserve the cheapest power for Wyoming residents rather than exporting it all to states where they could get higher retail prices and bigger profits, leaving Wyomings the less reliable and more expensive renewables. In case you missed it the bill only affects energy sold to Wyoming residents, that's only 584,153 people (!). The utilities can sell renewable energy outside the state with no penalty. 'When asked about the motivation for the bill and concerns about it driving away future wind generation, bill sponsor Republican Rep. David Miller from Fremont County said, "Wyoming is a great wind state and we produce a lot of wind energy. We also produce a lot of conventional energy, many times our needs. The electricity generated by coal is amongst the least expensive in the country. We want Wyoming residences to benefit from this inexpensive electrical generation."' ------ deftnerd Many states and utility companies are making it difficult for consumers to sell locally generated power to the grid. There is pain in the short term, but in the long term it'll just cause the renewable manufacturing industry to throw more resources at improving power storage as much as the power generation has improved over the last few decades. Tesla's Powerwall is a good step, but there are many other opportunities for companies to live in this field. Once storage technology improves, then more and more users can generate locally and store their own power and just use the grid as a backup power source. Interestingly enough, some jurisdictions don't allow people to go "off grid" entirely because of laws passed to ensure that all citizens have a source of power and potable water. Many of those laws don't take self-generation into account. ~~~ int_19h This particular bill explicitly allows for "net metering systems", which I believe is a reference to selling locally generated power to the grid. So it seems to be specifically targeting large-scale renewables. ------ woodandsteel The goal of the bill is to protect Wyoming's fossil fuel industries. But even if passed, it would largely fail to do that. That's because the great majority of the state's fossil fuel production is sold to other states and countries that are charging ahead with renewable energy. Instead of trying to stop the unstopable, the state government should be working on how to adapt to the new world where no one wants to buy their fossil fuel exports. ------ gersh I'd take this as a sign the fossil fuel industry is dying. Trying to ban your competition is usually a last resort for dying industries. ------ ransom1538 This is in the same bucket of stupidity as Oregon preventing you from pumping your own gas.[1] I do enjoy the comedy however. [1] [http://mentalfloss.com/article/18812/why-cant-you-pump- your-...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/18812/why-cant-you-pump-your-own-gas- oregon-and-new-jersey) ------ ridgeguy Given that the US grid is highly interconnected, would this legislation require Wyoming utilities to avoid using renewable-generated electricity from sources outside Wyoming? This would seem to require that Wyoming's utilities isolate the state's grid to prevent using "eligible resources", according to the bill. ~~~ ridgeguy That would be "non-eligible" resources, of course. Sorry for the typo. ------ sandworm101 Solar and wind both need land. Wyoming is a land of farmers, people who extract thier livings from thier land. Where is the farm lobby? They should be defending against any law attacking a potential "crop". Are they all putting ideology ahead of profits? Are we that far down the rabbit hole? ~~~ Spooky23 The money in Wyoming is in extractive industries. ------ js2 ALEC at work? [http://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-alec-plans-to-reshape- us...](http://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-alec-plans-to-reshape-us-energy- policy-in-2014/213358/) ------ caf So... Wyoming exports most of the electricity it generates, this doesn't apply to exported electricity, and electricity is fungible: in other words, this is just meaningless culture-war posturing, then? ------ coldcode Introduced. Not passed yet. ------ crb002 It might make sense. If coal demand plunges they will have a glut. As long as they don't have to pay the costs of the pollution it makes sense for Wyoming taxpayers. ------ xg15 So nice of the republicans that they suddenly discovered their love for coal workers. I'm curious if they would keep that love if coal companies invested in automation and laid off workers, or if then, they'd suddenly rediscover the faith in a free market. ~~~ philipkglass The US coal industry has been investing in automation and shedding workers for ages. The American coal industry's all time record year for output tonnage was 2008, and accomplished it with about half of the workers employed in 1980. The American coal industry shed a larger number of workers (though admittedly not a larger _percentage_ of workers) during the Reagan administration than during the Obama administration. It didn't start with Reagan either. It's been going on pretty much continuously for as long as we have records. American coal employment was lower and tonnage output was higher in the 1950s than the 1920s also. ~~~ porsupah Indeed - the Center for Media and Democracy's wiki article on US coal mining has some interesting charts: [http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Coal_and_jobs_in_the_Un...](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Coal_and_jobs_in_the_United_States#Coal_mining_jobs) Starting in 1900, with 448,581 miners producing 268,684,000 short tons, the output's more or less risen steadily to almost four times that total amount, but the number employed in 2013 was 80,209, reflecting about 20x the productivity of 1900. As far as the point of employment goes, Wyoming claimed a relatively modest total of 6,673 mining (surface and underground) jobs in 2013. ------ gragas This is dumb. If you look at the bill itself [1], it explicitly states 11 (a) In compliance year 2018, each electric utility 12 shall procure a minimum of ninety-five percent (95%) of its 13 sales of electricity in Wyoming from eligible generating 14 resources. 15 16 (b) In compliance year 2019, each electric utility 17 shall procure a minimum of one hundred percent (100%) of 18 its sales of electricity in Wyoming from eligible 19 generating resources. The key part here is that by 2019, each electric utility shall procure all of its sales of electricity in Wyoming from "eligible generating resources." Now, let's see how "eligible generating resources" is defined: 6 (v) "Eligible generating resource" means an 7 electricity generating resource either located within 8 Wyoming or delivering electricity into Wyoming from another 9 state that produces electricity from one (1) or more of the 10 following sources or system: 11 12 (A) Coal; 13 14 (B) Hydroelectric; 15 16 (C) Natural gas; 17 18 (D) Net metering system, as defined by W.S. 19 37-16-101(a)(viii); 20 21 (E) Nuclear; 22 23 (F) Oil. Oh no! It looks like "solar" and "wind" aren't on the list of eligible energy resources! Aye, take a closer look: both solar and wind energy fall under "net metering system," so in reality, climate activists are bashing their heads against the wall. They have the right sentiment, but they're only fighting against the bill because they didn't read it. :-( 1\. [http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2017/Introduced/SF0071.pdf](http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2017/Introduced/SF0071.pdf) ~~~ Kronopath This is addressed by the article: _Those "eligible resources" are defined solely as coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear, oil, and individual net metering._ _The latter includes home solar or wind installations in which the owner feeds excess electricity back into the grid, and is paid a predetermined, fixed fee for the power._ _But these small-scale sources of renewable energy are meant for private use. They just happen to produce extra power that can be utilized by the grid._ _Utility-scale wind and solar farms are not included in the bill 's list of "eligible resources," making it illegal for Wyoming utilities to use them in any way if the legislation passes._ And if you go back to the primary source[1], that is, _W.S. 37-16-101(a)(viii)_ , you can corroborate this, as "Net metering system" has restrictions such as: 7 (B) Has a generating capacity of not more 8 than: 9 10 (I) Twenty-five (25) kilowatts for a 11 residential facility; 12 13 (II) One (1) megawatt for a 14 nonresidential facility, if allowed by the electric 15 utility, but an electric utility may not disallow 16 nonresidential use equal to or less than twenty-five (25) 17 kilowatts. And: 2 (E) Is intended primarily to offset part or 3 all of the customer-generator's requirements for 4 electricity So the activists are right: this is effectively making it illegal to set up any _large-scale_ wind or solar farm. If any of you reading this live in Wyoming, _please_ bring this up with your representatives. It's deliberately interfering with the free market in order to artificially inflate the value of coal by making it illegal to sell large- scale alternative energy sources, sponsored by representatives of coal- producing counties. [1]: [http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2016/bills/SF0093.pdf](http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2016/bills/SF0093.pdf) ~~~ masonic making it illegal to set up any large-scale wind or solar farm... _when that electricity is then sold to Wyoming consumers_. Export to out-of- state consumers (the vast majority of consumption) is unaffected. ~~~ Kronopath Fair enough. Though it makes it pretty unappealing to set up a renewable energy source in Wyoming, or even in the general vicinity of the state, if you can't actually sell to people or utilities nearby. At that point, the only good reason to set up a renewable energy plant within Wyoming is if you have some extremely good geographical/climate/geological reason to do so. Note also that this bill also blocks geothermal energy, which I would expect should be pretty attractive as a source of energy for the home state of Yellowstone and Old Faithful. ------ lightedman Drop the sensationalist BS headline please. "Individual net metering" is explicitly mentioned. Net metering = individual solar panels owned by property owners. AKA The utility can't build solar but they can use the solar from any household that connects their own solar to the grid with net-metering tie-ins. This means that renewables of some sort are in fact allowed. All it took was reading to the 9th tiny paragraph. ~~~ mwfunk Well sure, it would be much harder, and even more anti-free market to ban private individuals from setting up their own renewable energy sources on their own property. That would be telling people what they can or can't do on private property, which is a whole other legal ball of wax than telling regulated utilities what they can or can't do. But utilities would be forbidden from maintaining solar and wind farms to provide energy to their customers. Your interpretation is correct, but it doesn't change any of the things that are bad or anti-free-market about this. I can see how someone might misinterpret the headline, but that requires an almost intentional misreading, regarding a fine point that doesn't impact anything that people are concerned about here.

Taking the awkwardness out of a Prenup - A Game Theoretic solution - philh http://lesswrong.com/lw/29w/taking_the_awkwardness_out_of_a_prenup_a_game/ ====== JoeAltmaier What a strange article. Only a geek could even think such a thing. "Taking the awkwardness out"? To find out your impending spouse had signed a contract that bound them to create an ironclad prenup with you, would mark you as the most suspicious, manipulative bastard on earth. That relieves the awkwardness of finding out later I suppose. ~~~ yummyfajitas How is it manipulative? It is nothing more than binding one's future self to a certain behavior. By that same logic it is manipulative of the spouse to attempt to bind your future self to other behavior (only doing it with her, sharing property, etc). ~~~ JoeAltmaier You preempt your spouse from any part in the discussion. A spouse is different from a business partner, in that they are supposed to be party to important decisions. ~~~ yummyfajitas Most people do that on all sorts of non-prenup topics (e.g., sex with third parties, children). What makes a prenup special? ~~~ JoeAltmaier What? Sign a contract with a 3rd party to avoid any chance of discussion? Really? ~~~ yummyfajitas Plenty of people preempt any discussion of certain topics and offer their spouse a "take it or leave it" choice. The most common mechanism of doing this is a credible claim of future emotional reactions ("I wouldn't feel the same way about you if you have sex with other people"), or perhaps the reactions of third parties ("my mom would disown me if I married a non-Lutheran"). I don't see what makes this mechanism so unique. ~~~ JoeAltmaier Yes of course. But to do it with an elaborate plan, set in motion ahead of time and sprung on them unexpected, is a species of cold, reptilian logic that defies rationalization. ------ philk I'm not sure what's so awkward about telling someone that you want a Prenup in the first place. If you're close enough to someone to consider marrying them then you're close enough to tell them that you need one. ------ marltod Interesting, However I trust my wife way more than I trust a 'company' that may or may not get bought by someone that wants to reinterpret my pre-nup to determine if it is iron clad enough to invalidate their right to half my stuff ------ jhuckestein Neat, I like the example with the chicken game. Game theory is always fun. I agree, though, that prenups might not be the best application for this. This comment from the original site is hilarious, too: "Maybe I should start a startup that requires you to pay a $1000 fee if you do business with anyone who signs a precommitment contract intended to give them a negotiating advantage." - Eliezer_Yudkowsky

Ask HN: Entrepreneur or Hacker? Or Both - ajaimk Trying to get a feel of who uses hacker news. So, are you an entrepreneur? A technical hacker? or both? ====== mahmud Life long academic. I spend 4 hours a day writing business communication, and about 6 or so programming. When I am speaking to people I am always teaching them something or learning something from them; a very strange take on sales, sure, but I approach sales as instruction, introducing the other to the possibilities and potential of my offering, and learning from them what I can do better. When I am coding, I and the machine are learning together; sometimes I do the teaching, when I am in the flow, other times it does, when I am debugging. ~~~ jacquesm > sometimes I do the teaching, when I am in the flow, other times it does, > when I am debugging. Poetry :) ------ jacquesm <http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll> both. ~~~ icey I would like to upvote you twice for providing both comments I came in here to make. ------ christonog I'm a little bit more complicated. A wanna be entrepeneur turned wanna be hacker aiming to become an entrepeneur, though you could argue that being an entrepreneur is more of a lifestyle choice rather than a job title. ------ dryicerx Technical hacker gone entrepreneur (at least attempting to). ------ yan Technical hacker. Maybe eventually the former. ------ ujjwalg Entrepreneur. ------ nivals Both.

4coder, a modern text editor based loosely on Emacs - bwidlar https://4coder.net ====== eggy I bought it, because I wanted a light-weight and fast C-specific editor. I was getting into it until I upgraded to Windows 10, and then the text rendered as illegible characters. It was not a UTF font problem, but something else with graphics. I filed a bug, and it was not fixed for a while, so I will have to go and check it out again. I have been using neovim. I have not touched emacs for about a year or so. Too many knucklebuster, non-intuitive keyboard commands. Neovim/Vim is surprisingly easy to get productive on. I watched Andrew Kelley livecode Zig in Vim, and I tried it again, and now I am in the groove! YMMV between any editor! ~~~ taeric Most Emacs commands have a sensible pneumonic. If I recall, vim was similarly conversational in the best commands. ~~~ bryal Mnemonic*. Pneu- means related to air. ~~~ taeric Thanks! I don't know why I didn't spot check for this mistake. Is one I make enough that I specifically look for it most posts... (Well, most posts it is relevant. Clearly missed this one...) ------ stevekemp Sadly the exensions are written in C++, so this is nothing nearly as dynamic as Emacs. ~~~ qorrect It's also not free, not even to try out. ~~~ nbm There’s a free demo version (on the same page where you can buy it), although that doesn’t allow you to exercise the customization via C++ code (which is perhaps one of the most intriguing parts of the editor). ------ revertts Allen Webster, the creator, was recently interviewed on the Handmade podcast. I thought it was a good discussion - touched on text editors, performance, and some interesting programming language ideas. [https://handmade.network/podcast/ep/14a5407e-5f73-4c59-a422-...](https://handmade.network/podcast/ep/14a5407e-5f73-4c59-a422-44c4ece6a1bf) ------ jackcviers3 Why c++? The best part of emacs is the dynamic environment. ~~~ revertts Many of the current users, including the creator, are in gamedev. Being extensible in a language they’re already intimately familiar with is a selling point. ~~~ blindluke If targeting gamedev users, why not Lua? You can switch from Lisp to something more people are familiar with without losing the dynamic environment. ------ the-peter Call me when it has org-mode.

Ask HN: How does React hydration work? - Macintosh007 I&#x27;ve been struggling to fully grasp how React hydration&#x2F;rehydration works. When using something like Gatsby, is React fully sent to to the client AFTER the static content? Looking for someone to explain it in an easy to understand manner. ====== pryelluw This is a good explanation: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46516395/whats-the- diffe...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46516395/whats-the-difference- between-hydrate-and-render-in-react-16#46516869) TL;DR: It is used to attack event listeners to server rendered apps.

Visualizing timelines of music mashups - pserwylo http://mashupbreakdown.com/ ====== pserwylo From the about page [0]: "Mashup Breakdown is an attempt to visually describe the musical wizardry that goes into a mashup. For each track, you'll see the timeline of samples used, and with the currently active samples highlighted in real time as the track plays. I (@brahn) created the site when the spectacular mega-mashup artist Girl Talk released his 5th album, All Day, composed from an astounding 372 songs by other artists." [0] - <http://blog.mashupbreakdown.com/pages/about>

American Airlines earned an enemy - dsr12 http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2013/american-airlines-earned-an-enemy.html ====== sjtgraham The thing I hate most American is they decline all non-US issued cards or non- US PayPal accounts for ticketing, but do so silently in the background while appearing to have gone through. When you get to the airport you find your booking wasn't ticketed, the flight has gone up _and_ have to pay a fee for paying at the airport. To get around this I try to book AA tickets with another OneWorld carrier. To their credit I took SFO->JFK->LHR this summer. The first flight was insanely delayed (in my experience many AA flights out of SFO are ridiculously delayed), and I had to sprint through JFK to make the connection. I knew my checked bag wouldn't have made it, so I didn't waste time waiting for it. I went straight to the counter and asked them if my bag was in London, it wasn't, it was still at JFK. They apologised profusely and a courier delivered it to my apartment the next day. If you're wondering why I tolerate AA, it's because I have frequent flier status on BA, and get insane air miles (base plus 100% bonus, minimum) for flying on OneWorld carriers. ~~~ crazytony ah crap totally forgot about that: I spent a fair whack of points to send my partner back to the US in style. My non-us credit card was declined and they cancelled the booking only notifying us when we showed up at their airport and they told us that there was no ticket and couldn't issue a boarding pass. But then they took the points as a "penalty" for forfeiting the ticket because he didn't fly.... ------ jrockway The baggage policy you agree to and pay for is basically, "if we lose your bag or smash it into very small pieces, we will pay you $20." Then when they lose your bag or smash it into small pieces, people want more than $20, and write angry blog posts when they don't get more than $20. I don't get it. Have these people never heard of FedEx or UPS? They will transport your bag on an aircraft _and_ sell you insurance against loss or damage. Why choose the inferior product if you don't want inferior results? (I do know why: cost. Everyone wants a free lunch.) Ultimately, I have to say that I'm a fan of the brave new world of air travel. I used to hate all the nickle-and-diming, but while doing all that hating, I didn't realize how cheaply one can move around the country. JFK-SFO is like $300 round-trip now. 5000 miles in a FLYING MACHINE for $300! But instead, people complain that their bags are not insured for $10,000 each, or that they have to pay $100 for more leg room. Well, yeah. If it was "free", then someone else would book their ticket earlier than you and you wouldn't even have _the option_ of getting more leg room. (Also, am I the only person that likes American Airlines? 400,000 miles, and I only have one experience that really made me mad.) ~~~ jmcmichael Is it possible to ship stuff (laptops, cellphone maybe) via FedEX or UPS, internationally, and have it arrive at or near the same time/place as your destination w/o having to wait for it to clear customs? I had considered this but eliminated it as a dependable method because I assume that most countries have their own customs procedures for items shipped via FedEx/UPS and in some cases items might be tied up for days or weeks. ~~~ _delirium You're correct; to take advantage of the personal customs exemption for travelers you must carry the items in your luggage with you, not ship them separately. If you ship them, you might be deemed to be importing them, depending on the country's customs procedures (and even if you qualify for another exemption, they may be held in customs until you go fill out some paperwork to claim them). ~~~ umami I have been considering giving LuggageForward[1] a try. They seem to handle the customs aspect in a way that works the same as if you carried the bag with you. Their rates are quite attractive as well. [1] [http://www.luggageforward.com/](http://www.luggageforward.com/) Disclaimer: no affiliation at all with them. In the end I never tried them because I now travel with carry-on only. ------ smoyer I used to travel a lot and if you choose to make an enemy out of an airline over a lost bag, it won't take long until all the airlines are your enemy ... then you'll either quit flying or pay your enemy. Here are a few tips: \- Travel lighter! I was very careful to keep track of what I did and didn't use on each trip. There were very few things that went back into the suitcase if they weren't used (a brief-case umbrella and a tiny sewing kit are all I can think of). \- If you're traveling for several weeks, pack 5-7 days of clothes. Often they can be worn more than once without washing, and most hotels have laundry services. \- Traveling with kids is hard (I have four) ... especially infants. If you paid for a ticket for your child, they get a carry-on and a personal item too - even if they can't carry it. \- Rollie's are great but you can make them better. You can strap the handles together so that a whole set of rollies can be pulled via one handle. Some matching sets of luggage include these straps. \- If you do check a bag, make sure you can afford to lose what's in the bag. You will NEVER get the value of that bags contents back from the airline, so keep the value low. \- Keep your toothbrush, deodorant and at least a set of underwear in your laptop/personal bag (unless you also carry on your allowed piece of baggage. Finally, the whole travel process can be irritating. Ticketing can earn an enemy quickly if they can't deal with missed flights, delays and cancellations in a reasonable way. So the real tip here is to not stress about it too much (hard for type A personalities). If you let a poor travel experience ruin your trip, you've lost more than a bag. ~~~ pytrin I think you missed the point of the post - it's not about losing a bag, it's about the customer service failure that ensued. I had bags lost on a couple of occasions, and usually they are delivered on the same day or the next to the address I stay at. If I'd had such an experience, I wouldn't be flying the same airline either. ~~~ smoyer Nope ... when I read the post, I read that he'd declared himself to be an enemy of a large group of minimum-wage, overworked employees of a company who's executives are simply maximizing profit. I'd be willing to bet they calculate how many people will be angry enough to quit flying and account for this churn in their projections. These people have a high turn-over rate and absolutely no incentive to go beyond the company policy. My point was that "the best way to win is to not play the game". EDIT: As I thought about this, I realized we're a bit insulated from the problem, but consider this scenario: "I tried to call SnapChat the other day to have them delete an embarrassing photo before it got to the recipient - Can you believe there's a company without a phone number? THEY'RE MY NUMBER ONE ENEMY!" ~~~ tehwebguy Airlines depend on loyalty, that's why they have significant loyalty programs. Also that is a crazy comparison, an airline is responsible for getting you to your destination alive and with your bags, it's not acceptable for them to have ineffective customer service. Even if what they offered wasn't so important the fact is you pay money for their services, the deal has to be two sided. ~~~ smoyer I agree that it's a crazy comparison ... but I've heard non-technical people say very similar things. I was trying to point out that our perception of our industry's practices may not be the way others perceive us. Other misunderstandings are: "I can't believe they just shut down my favorite application for doing X" \- spoken by people without paid accounts. "That company has so much money you think they'd do X" \- (most commonly this one is "add my requested but obscure feature) - spoken by someone who doesn't realize that a company can be well-funded but "burning through cash" unprofitable. ------ faster American lost my bag on the way back from Italy a few years back, wouldn't answer the phone, called security when I went back to the baggage claim at the airport to ask them what was going on, and when they found the bag, they sent it to San Jose Costa Rica on a boat, instead of San Jose California. Of course I never saw that bag again. I learned that baggage losses are balanced against the cost of paying for more reliable and trustworthy baggage handlers, and customer service is subject to a similar balancing act. I also started travelling lighter, and keeping an extra day's clothing in my carry-on bag. It's much more difficult to be prepared for baggage loss with a kid, but it was worth it. Try running out of diapers because planes are delayed. When was the last time you saw diapers for sale in an airport? ~~~ kelnos My solution: I never check a bag. I started this practice 6 or 7 years ago, and it's great. I have a fantastic carry-on bag that fits everything I need, plus usually a small laptop bag, and I never let them out of my sight. I've gone on trips 2 weeks long with no trouble, and could easily go longer. The one possible annoyance is staying below the carry-on liquid requirements, but I haven't had a problem with that yet. (You can always purchase things like toothpaste and shampoo at your destination if the travel-size containers aren't enough.) Fringe benefits: since I'm not checking a bag, I can get to the airport a little later. And I also get to leave the airport earlier at my destination since I don't have to wait at baggage claim. Of course, those of you traveling with kids have it a bit harder, but given the passenger mix on most planes I've flown on, most people could likely follow this advice. ~~~ tadfisher I learned this mantra from a jet-setting lawyer: "Checked luggage is lost luggage." I survived a month in Europe shortly after with carry-ons. It was doable, pleasant even, but I had to make some sacrifices: one pair of shoes, no laptop, no heavy jacket. It's obviously not ideal and possibly not feasible for someone traveling with a non-ticketed baby to travel this way. ~~~ eitally It depends on a lot of things (climate, specific personal requirements, etc). My wife & I took our two young children -- 2 and 4 -- to California & Hawaii this summer without checking any bags. It was a 17 day trip. This is way more challenging on business trips when you usually need to pack nicer clothing. ------ keithpeter "First, trying to find out what actually happened since London won't call us back (no doubt ashamed of their gross negligence not recording any information on the passenger who called and their following inability to recover the now- considered stolen bag)." Nope, just minimum wage and very busy people. The 'miracle' the OA refers to is based on 'driving out cost' at every possible point in the chain. ------ cm277 Erm, I think it's more likely that the laptop showed up in X-ray scan and a baggage handler availed themselves of the contents. I had the same thing happen to me at Heathrow; I spent about 5 minutes to locate it in Lost & Found a few days later, stripped of any identifying information and of course the laptop. American Airlines sucks, but I don't see their fault here. ~~~ chrismcb The customer left their bag with AA. AA was now responsible for the bag, until they gave it back to the customer. The fact that TSA or similar people are thieves, or there are thieves at the carousel does not remove responsibility from AA. ------ United857 In a lot of countries (but oddly not the US), there are people at the baggage claim exits checking claim tags with bags to prevent precisely this scenario of bags taken by mistake. ~~~ johansch Where have you seen this? ~~~ erre There used to be those people in Brazil up until about 10 years ago. I haven't seen them in any airports there since. ------ autodidakto I was young and naive, and I thought that giving hundreds of dollars to an airline meant that they hold up their end of the bargain (deliver your bag). I lost my wife's 18 year old teddy bear. They stalled and stalled and 2 months later finally reimbursed us for clothes (but as the fine print says: "no electronics or jewelry or anything valuable! What kind of idiot trusts us with that anyway?"). It was AA too, but they're all the same. I've distrusted airlines since and go to extreme lengths to deny them my money or at least never check in anything. ------ rickyc091 The sad and unfortunate thing is that this doesn't only occur with American Airlines. It's basically the same with most airlines. I've had a similar issue with the customer service with Delta airlines. I know a co-worker that struggled to find a lost bag from US Airways. If you search "baggage lost" on twitter, you'll see plenty of people in the same boat. I'm surprised no one has attempted to fix this problem... huge market opportunity right here... ~~~ umami I have recently researched this field out of a personal need and there is a few companies that do fast, inexpensive and insured luggage transport. They even do it door to door, picking up at your home and delivering at your hotel (before you arrive if you send the bags early). They might just need to do more advertising. In the end I did not try any of them but was pleasantly surprised that there are people working on fixing this. ------ deanWombourne Have you considered that the person who mistakenly took your bag _did_ return it as promised and AA have, once again, made a mistake? ------ memracom What if this is not just an American Airlines problem? What if it is a general problem with society as people become more and more absorbed in their virtual Internet lives and no longer care to do a good job at whatever company they work for? ------ allard American used to send people to the wrong terminal at LGA. Do they still? They use concourse D at terminal B but called (or call) it terminal D. No amount of any communication on this would register. ------ markrickert AA won't ever go out of business... they're "too big to fail." I'm sure they'll just be absorbed into "US Government Airlines" when that time comes. ------ amerika_blog I can't wait for robots to replace baggage handlers, who seem to be the weak link in the chain. You put a laptop in your bag, and it vanished? Statistically that's most likely. It doesn't take a smart criminal to invent the "other tourist" who "accidentally" took the bag, called a week later, and no one managed to write down their name and phone number.

PG Is Not a Fan of Shark Tank - bluker http://www.inc.com/business-insider/mark-cuban-chris-sacca-paul-graham-twitter-feud.html ====== pedalpete SharkTank and YC are different products for different people. What is the biggest success SharkTank has had? Are they building multiple billion dollar businesses? How many low-tech manufactured products has YC created? I somewhat agree with Sacca, and completely see PGs point. But I think everybody is looking at things through the lens of their view of what an entrepreneur is. ps. I hate saying I feel pg is wrong, feels like I must be making a mistake :) ------ sharemywin I think part of the misunderstanding is with a virtual product you can cheaply iterate. With products that have a production cycle and physical costs associated with changes you need to sell what you have to fund next the cycle R&D. ------ pashakym He is absolutely right. Shark Tank is a show. Startup is a business. If you are in showbiz and looking for fun you should go there. Otherwise focus on customers. ~~~ sharemywin Completely disagree. 90% of the companies on shark tank would be completely un-fundable through any other process including YC. Can't see how sponge-daddy would have ever made it into YC yet alone been successful had they even went through YC. And I doubt airBNB would have worked with Shark Tank. 2 completely different worlds. Both doing very good things for entrepreneurs. ~~~ pedalpete As I'm reading it, you and pashakym are making the same argument. Not sure why they are getting down voted. ~~~ sharemywin "If you are in showbiz and looking for fun you should go there." Makes it sounds like the businesses on shark tank aren't real businesses. I would argue that any business were you made out better then if you worked for someone else is a win. ~~~ pashakym This is my personal opinion. This show might (only might) bring you a few users. However, I think it's a huge distraction. ------ throwaway2343 PG is so insufferable in text form. I've listened to his live speeches and it's like an entirely different person. Maybe chalk it up to the limits of tone over text, but it's a consistent pattern.

My thoughts from IETF 96 - okket http://blog.apnic.net/2016/07/28/thoughts-ietf-96/ ====== daenney For an entry that's titled "My thoughts on" it seems to mostly be a report on what happened with very little comment or reflection, except for the 6MAN section (and one or two other lines). I'm not entirely sure what to takeaway from this either. ------ ralfd Interesting how this is since half a day on the front page with zero comments ~~~ tptacek The IETF is less and less relevant. For instance: how much of this is Huston talking about random DNS things, like DNSSEC and extensions, that will never be meaningfully deployed?

Clowns to the Left, Jokers to the Right: On the Actual Ideology of the US Press - barrkel http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2010/06/14/ideology_press.html ====== politicalist I enjoyed this essay, but the author makes unnecessary divisions. Many on the "extremes" have expressed all the positions he describes, to some extent. These aren't really incompatible frameworks, unless they're taken as dogmatic. For instance, a person might believe all of the following: 1\. Media companies serve their owners, just like any other company. To a rough first approximation, this will predict what the product will look like. Along with the fact that advertisers are the main customers. 2\. Journalists often show a liberal bias, and this shows up in their work. "Liberal" here means what someone like Bill Gates might believe in. This allows them to define the bounds of the left. 3\. There exist "High Broderists" who purport to define a moderate center -- halfway in between the two parties. 4\. The press uses little tactics like "he-said-she-said journalism" and "the sphere of deviance." ------ asdflkj "It's very simple": journalists mainly do what they think will make them look good in front of other journalists. The author did a good job of elaborating on that, though. This is an instance of a very broad and very underappreciated pattern in society. Replace "journalists" with "women" in that sentence, or with "university professors", and it's just as true. ------ vl >Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right Strangely I was under impression it was other way around. ~~~ jjs It's a lyric from the classic rock song "Stuck in the Middle with You."

Twitter is the crystal meth of newsrooms - smacktoward https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/twitter-is-the-crystal-meth-of-newsrooms/2019/01/25/2bd5e0a2-20d9-11e9-8b59-0a28f2191131_story.html ====== mimixco I'm I the only person who hates seeing what should be a blog post or an article formatted as 27 tweets? This is just dumb. Actual journalism and proper long-form writing seem near death.

Is an "Internet Kill Switch" Technically Feasible in the US? - privacyguru http://www.securityweek.com/internet-kill-switch-technically-feasible-us ====== bitskits Wouldn't it just be a law requiring ISP's to kill peering upon the government's request? Am I missing something here? If it isn't feasible, I would think that's because it isn't legal, not because of a technical hurdle. ~~~ roc If the "Kill Switch" bill passes, the legal question will be answered. As no- one's optimistic the bill will fail [1] commentary has moved on to: can it _actually_ be implemented? Personally, I don't see that being a very interesting question either. Once it's law, "Kill Switch"-Compliance will get built into the big switches and routers. It would only be a technical challenge to implement in the near term. And I don't think you can be paranoid-enough to think the government plans on hitting this switch in the near term, yet be rational enough to believe the government would wait for _legal authority_ to do so. So whether it's feasible in the next 5 years is pretty academic. [1] If people aren't going to take issue with standing constitution-free-zones covering 80% of the population, the growing surveillance state, increasingly- intrusive security theatre at the airport and greenlit assassinations of _suspected_ terrorist US citizens, an argument about internet access during hypothetical 'states of emergency' has a snowball's chance in hell. ~~~ wmf I think you're right on. People complained that CALEA was technically infeasible, but those people just didn't understand it; ISPs are obligated to _make_ CALEA work and they complied even if it meant redesigning their networks. If ISPs have to update their OSS systems to support the "kill switch", they will do it. ~~~ bitskits That's actually the example [CALEA] I had in mind as well. I don't see a huge technical hurdle here, other than maybe a script to disable all peering interfaces for every ISP in the US. This could be done by hand just as easily should Uncle Sam come knocking. The real issue, to me, is the why behind this. The only real motivator is to prevent people from organizing to overtake a government they perceive as corrupt. Is it really worth exploring crippling our economy and stifling free speech at the same time? Forget the technical hurdle, what about the constitutional one? Interesting that we also claim to have a way to "force" internet on a country who kills it, but at the same time are looking for a legal basis to kill it ourselves. ~~~ roc > _"Forget the technical hurdle, what about the constitutional one?"_ We haven't had much luck with that one lately. I don't think the "Why" is quite so transparently dystopian. They don't want to turn off the entire internet. It's just another attempted end-run around the judicial process, to make it easier to further political and economic goals. e.g. filtering WikiLeaks or BitTorrent. The idea that they would need this to disconnect critical infrastructure to protect it from cyberattack is laughable. Any critical infrastructure that could still operate independent from the internet should not _have_ a connection to the internet, and if it _did_ should certainly have it's own disconnect capability. The only reason to put disconnect capability on the ISP or backbone carrier is to do it _against the will of the target facility_. If they wanted to protect things like the Hoover Dam [1] they'd just issue/enforce some government regs. [2] [1] The Dam Authority has already taken issue with being a talking point in this debate. Pointing out that, no, they are not foolish enough to have dam controls connected to the internet. [2] I'm pretty sure these already exist, as regards air-gaps for critical infrastructure and security requirements for networks that _do_ have a connection to the public internet. There may not be a unified national service to flip connection-kill-switches, but that would be resolved with a government network project, not a new law. The government already has legal authority over infrastructure. ------ blauwbilgorgel Instead of a Kill Switch, I think it would be possible to make a Flood Switch. When enough shit would hit the fan, to make the president issue the Kill order, all bets would be off. Let's say Americans are using Twitter or a foreign website to organize riots in a civil war, I don't think once the order is given and such a bill is in place, that the government has to ask nicely and force compliance. It will put all government computers and some very big tubes into DDOS'ing whoever is publishing something they don't want published at that very moment. ~~~ chc If I were these hypothetical guerillas, I wouldn't have one site, I'd have hundreds. Good luck DDOSing 600 independent sites at once, even if you're the government. I'm pretty sure killing the ISPs is simple by comparison. ------ ZachPruckowski From a brute-force PoV, I imagine you can have armed FBI agents in the offices of major ISPs in an hour or so. If they block their customers and they also block their resellers, then really you can handle most of the Internet with probably a dozen 2-man teams. It's not really that critical if it's deemed too hard to block two guys on the same local ISP from chatting. Not to mention that even rudimentary steps - knocking out DNS or even just Google, Yahoo, and Bing - would put 95% of Americans effectively offline. Metcalfe's Law works both ways - if you cut off even 3/4 of the internet, it's now only a square-root of a square-root as valuable as it used to be. ------ oigftrgtyh Isn't it as simple as changing the router tables so everything goes to fox news? ------ cosmicray You could certainly bust the internet into a lot of small unconnected subnets, simply by telling all the backbone providers to disconnect peering. I would expect that .mil and continuity of government circuits would be tagged as exempt, and would continue to work. I dunno what happens if your provider happens to be someone like Hughes or DirectPC. That's one heck of a large subnet. ------ quellhorst If the kill switch is built into routers, expect that to be used by hackers. You'll have to use open source router code like dd-wrt to avoid it. This is a bad idea and is trying to change how the Internet works. The Internet was designed to stay on even if there was a nuke attack. ISPs have been handeling DOS attacks for years successfully without a kill switch. ------ gojomo And note, if a 'kill switch' is ever required, the agency that will enforce its adoption by ISPs? Just as with wiretap requirements and broadcast language/content censorship, the FCC. Remember that before cheering on the FCC to have authority over which ISPs are sufficiently 'neutral'. (And don't be surprised when 'neutral' gets redefined over time into 'compliant with the FCC's political biases'.)

Man discovers glasses-free 3D tech in the blink of an eye (video) - pedrokost http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/15/man-discovers-glasses-free-3d-tech-in-the-blink-of-an-eye-video/ ====== pedrokost Is it healthy for the eyes to blink for a prolonged period at high frequencies? ~~~ iwwr Instead of glasses, electrodes hooked up directly in the nerves that control blinking, sync'd with the video stream :) ------ rmah I'm fairly sure it's a joke kids. ------ Luyt I'd get RSI in my eyelids.

Ask HN: How much are we worth? - savoy11 We are a small startup with two founders and no employees. Bootstrapped, no external financing whatsoever. We are selling software and making approximately $200K per year in sales, but we are also growing rapidly, at about 5% each month. We have $0 marketing budget - meaning we just split the revenue. We do not have any expenses other than our hosting ($10 per month).<p>I know that many variables are missing here, but very roughly speaking, how much are we worth at this point? There is interest by our competitors and they want to buy us, however I have no idea how much to ask for. ====== davidwparker If you want a corporate finance answer... Assuming you can go on forever, you are a perpetuity with annual growth g = 79.58% = ~80% (1.05^12 - 1), coupon c = $200,000, and some value of discount rate r, which you could otherwise get with your money. For our example, we'll suppose you can invest somewhere and get a 10% return. The formula for a growing perpetuity = PV = c/(r - g), where PV is the present value. This formula only works if the growth rate is less than the discount rate... following this rule, we have to use a higher discount rate, so we'll assume you can get 100% somewhere else (let me know if you have a place where you can do this.) If you take the series of system payments, then you would have: PV = c/(1 + r) + c(1 + g)/((1 + r)^2) + ... + c((1 + g)^n)/((1 + r)^n) which ultimately equals PV = c/(r - g) PV = 200,000 / (1.00 - .80) = $1,000,000 So $1,000,000 is the amount someone would be willing to pay for all the present values of all future earnings on the perpetuity, assuming you have an r = 100%. If g > r, then the growing perpetuity would (theoretically) have an infinite value. edit: added value = $1,000,000 assuming r = 100% ------ staunch With your revenue anything less than $1M is probably too low. The upper limit is almost boundless. If the buyer would have to spend a year, $1M in ads, and 15 employees to get to where you are then it might be worth $5M or more to them. Avoid pricing it based on revenue alone. Think about how you're going to feel after you've sold. At what price will you not regret it? At what price will you be really happy? ------ toast76 5% growth monthly (if you can manage to continue that growth) means you're just about doubling the value of your company annually. ($16k sales this month will be $32k in 15mths). If you keep the company growing at this rate for another 3 years you'll have an annual income of over a $1M. So how many years are you planning to run the business for? What is the likely sustainable growth? Do some maths on that. ------ curt Take EBITDA (Earning before income tax, depreciation, and amortization) and multiply that number by between 5-18. You get a higher multiple through higher growth, long term consumers, sustainability (your consumers won't leave), competition, size, etc. For what you said you likely are around 10, so if the company doesn't need someone to sustain growth it would be worth around 2M. If it's a talent acquisition or IP does change the calculation somewhat. Now a year from now I would raise that multiple to around 12-14 if you maintain your growth rate. ~~~ jumby ya right 12-14. maybe in 1999. ~~~ curt At 5% per month, after the first year the EBITDA multiple would go from 12 to 8. After 2nd year, 5 and so on. So the company would pay off the purchase during the 4th year. A good deal for any purchase. ------ zbruhnke generally speaking you are worth 5 times your annual revenue ($1M) however with the growth rates you are experiencing I think you would not be out of line asking for $1.5-2M maybe even more if ou can prove the growth trend over sevral months with hard numbers ~~~ petervandijck 3 to 5 times annual revenue is indeed typical. From there on it's all handwaving about "exponential growth" and "strategic value" to get more than that. You are "worth" what they are willing to pay, it's that simple. In terms of money, you're worth about a million dollars. But it wouldn't be that weird to get much more, depending on how good you are at handwaving about "strategic value" and "exponential growth", and playing the negotiation game. ------ MaysonL How much time are you 2 putting into the business? How much employee time would a buyer have to put into the business? If a buyer has to pay a fulltime developer to replace you guys, then your business wouldn't make them very much, unless it keeps growing for a few years without cost increases. ~~~ savoy11 Almost full-time. Product is also very support intensive (a lot of email/forum support that is highly technical). The product can fit well into competitors portfolio of products and can make them much more than what we do (they are established, big, have sales channels, etc) ~~~ jaden If they want you guys to join the company for some period of time, make sure to account for that in the price. For example, if you commit to stay on some number of years and an exciting opportunity presents itself during that time, you want the compensation to be enough that you can pass on the opportunity without too much heartache. ------ coryl You'd have to factor in the industry you're in as well. Some markets are volatile, and don't last long. ------ noonespecial The general rule for brick and mortars is: Assets - liabilities + 5 X last years profit. This is a starting point. Then you add in all of the confounding factors. Web businesses are nothing but confounding factors! If I were you, I'd take a hard conservative look at my 5 year growth potential based on the growth thats already happened and use that as an average for your 5 X profit. If your buyers are serious this will open negotiations, if they were just pulling the handle, hoping for a jackpot, they'll leave in a huff, trying to make you feel as though you'd demanded an unreasonable sum. ------ LabSlice I believe that established businesses sell for 3-5 times their annual revenue. Your situation sounds different. With practically no costs, steady growth, and the claim that you don't advertise --- well, that can make you quite a premium company to acquire. And the fact that you are being courted allows you to try pitch for even higher $$$. ------ jaden I run a site that pulls in a decent amount from Google Ads. I was contacted by a potential buyer and after going back and forth quite a bit, we arrived at around 5x annual revenue. I realize Google Ads != selling software but at least it's a data point. ~~~ savoy11 btw - somewhat related - how much money can be made of Google Ads out of a site with 1 million page views per month? Content is technical - developer oriented. We are currently running a niche ad network and making approximately $1000 per month off ads, but I believe this is low. ~~~ jaden From what I've heard (my site isn't technical so I can't say definitively) technical sites have low click through rates because many developers use adblockers and may not be as attracted to advertising. But it's hard to estimate because it can vary wildly depending on how many folks are advertising in your space. Run a month trial and see how it does. ------ jumby 6.5 multiple seems reasonable for SaaS. 5 is a bit low for software with 0 expenses and no one is going to do >8 in these uncertain times. ------ brudgers How big is the market segment you serve in terms of total dollars? What percentage of it are you currently servicing? ~~~ savoy11 Very competitive, established and growing segment. Also, kind of big. Developer tools, basically. There are are at least 5 very big companies (revenues of $10mil+) and hundreds of employees each, and like 100 small companies in this segment. It's a very hard and competitive field. ~~~ brudgers The big question is, "do you want to sell right now or hold out for FU money or have a lifestyle business?" Unless the answer is "We want to sell right now" then this exercise is a distraction...and a potential source of stress if you have 50:50 equity split. If you want to sell now, then what is your ideal outcome when the value to the purchaser: is your IP? your staff? elimination of competition? And more importantly, what is your partner's ideal outcome in each of these scenarios? Keep in mind that if your suitor's goal is to eliminate competition, just floating the idea of purchase can create enough chaos to cause a divorce. My best advice is to discuss what your company is worth to each of you first. As far as value goes, you're producing revenue of $100,000 per full-time employee. That doesn't leave much cash for a new owner so a valuation based on current revenue would not be favorable to you. From a revenue standpoint, you're basically a small business. If the compeitor sees the potential value is in the IP, the real question becomes, how much would it cost them to deliver competing functionality? That number may be a lot less than you would want to sell for. If the motivation is to bring you and/or your partner onboard, then you're back to do you really want to sell + do you really want to go work for those people? So the price is relative to the value you place on the company. Sorry there's no numbers. My best advice is to determine quickly if both of you even want to sell and get back to building your business until there's actually an offer to consider. Good luck. ~~~ savoy11 Yes, thanks, I'll upvote that since it is spot on. You pretty much nailed all the issues we have. At this point we have chosen to just keep on. If we manage to sustain this type of progress for the next 2-3 years, things cannot go worse. All that potential buying thing puts an extra layer of problems, heavy discussions, waste of time, lawyers, etc. As far as out assets go - we might be very valuable since we bring a very successful open source project (site has 1.2M page view per month) + commercial products built on top of it. Just the name and open source site pointing to our competitors may bring them a lot of value alone. Our usage base (for the open source products) is also huge. The goodwill and IP are I believe quite expensive at this point. But we will just move on and keep going. Thanks a lot. ------ crasshopper Just do the PV. $200*12 = 2400 k If you can convince them the growth will accelerate, so much the better.

Project Hierarchy is fusing Java with a Database - computerdork https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/986918042/hierarchy-the-future-of-programming ====== computerdork Feel free to ask the devs of Hierarchy any questions on this Hacker News submission!

Network Neuroscience Theory of Human Intelligence - marchenko http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(17)30221-8 ====== Jeff_Brown Graphs (networks, webs) are a data structure we have not exploited enough. Tons of research is going into using graphs for artificial intelligence, and for understanding human intelligence (as in this article). But what about using knowledge graphs to augment human intelligence, like a prosthetic? This is the power of Google search. It uses a knowledge graph that models the world (with an emphasis on the internet). The graph is big, but the view of it offered to users is minuscule -- in part to keep the interface as simple as possible, and in part for economic reasons. There is open source software that lets people keep their own knowledge graphs. In Semantic Synchrony [1] you can keep a knowledge graph and merge it with others' knowledge graph. Joshua Shinavier (who wrote Semantic Synchrony) and I share a graph with over 400,000 nodes, and most views load in the blink of an eye. A sister project, Digraphs with Text[2], offers a more flexible system of expression: It generalizes the graph, allowing relationships to involve more than two members, and allowing relationships to be members of other relationships. It also offers a search facility very much like natural language: To search, for instance, for reasons neurons need vitamin B, you would use a query like "(neurons #need vitamin B) #because /it". (The # mark indicates a joint between members of a relationship.) [1] [https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/wiki/](https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/wiki/) [2] [https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/digraphs-with- text](https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/digraphs-with-text) ~~~ ismail Thanks for the links. Will experiment with these. I have been building a personal knowledge graph based on concept maps[0] using cmap tools[1]. [0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map) [1] [https://cmap.ihmc.us](https://cmap.ihmc.us) ~~~ joshsh It would be interesting to visualize a SmSn knowledge graph as a Concept Map. I feel that text buffers are best for viewing and editing a graph when you are seated at a keyboard, but graphical views have their place, as well. ------ neom This is an awesome lecture that really helps understand how the brain works at a neurological level: Jack Gallant - Working toward a complete functional atlas of the human brain - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Qiq22PRWQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Qiq22PRWQ) ------ forapurpose A psychology professor once said to me that throughout history our theories of the mind tend to analogize the dominant research paradigm of the time. At one time it was chemistry, then physics, and now it's computer science. I write that because it suggests that our theories of mind depend our own perspectives to a great degree - perhaps in their conclusions, or in how we describe them, or in our choice of research. (I wish I could remember the chemistry or physics analogies ATM.) ~~~ alexpetralia That's exactly the first thing I thought as well. This article is relevant: [https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process- informati...](https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information- and-it-is-not-a-computer) ~~~ eli_gottlieb >This article is relevant: [https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not- process-informati...](https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process- informati..). That article is a piece of shit which misunderstands the definition of computation, the claims of naive versus modern computationalism in philosophy of mind, _and_ modern neuroscience, all at once. Without any judgement, I'd like to ask that we all stop sharing it. ------ iraphael This is going a little over my head. Can anyone with more expertise help summarize / ELI5? ~~~ jugg1es My undergrad is in Neurobiology, but I don't work in the field, but I can give you my understanding. This article is basically an article that reviews the current theories regarding the neuroscience of intelligence. It's saying that there seems to be evidence of 'g' (which you could call IQ, but is the variance in cognitive abilities) that dictates the efficiency of our brain as a network of networks. It describes the brain as a interconnected global network of local networks that have discrete responsibilities. The reason these local networks to handle specific things is because it's more efficient to process in close proximity. And that the communication between these 'nodes' and the ability to tap into stored memory and intuition is described by 'g'. ~~~ Gibbon1 That matches what I sussed out growing up with a high functioning older brother and friends of his, also special needs. Some things they understood or could do easily as anyone else. Others not so much. interestingly one of my brothers friends could spell and write perfectly, way above average for his age. My assumption was some parts of they brains didn't develop normally which made it much more difficult for them to learn certain tasks. I've also run into people that have other deficits, friend didn't drive because of spacial deficits. But had a PhD in math. Bonus my brother drives. ~~~ beautifulfreak There's some evidence that autism results from hyperconnected brain regions. [http://www.medicaldaily.com/kids-autism-have- hyperconnected-...](http://www.medicaldaily.com/kids-autism-have- hyperconnected-brain-areas-could-brain-imaging-one-day-diagnose- disorder-262261) ~~~ Gibbon1 > autism 99% of these autism studies are garbage. ------ curuinor This would actually indicate that spearman's g cannot distributed ~Gaussian. CLT wouldn't apply, anyhow, but positive feedback effects (a la small world RG) would apply. Very SFI sort of thing

Building a Fashion Company on the Internet? Stop. Just stop. - rokhayakebe http://melanie.io/?p=139 ====== chime > My guess is that the “back-end” supply chain / software / inventory > management problems are just not as sexy as the “front-end” consumer-facing > problems, or maybe the consumer-facing problems are just more intuitive. Absolutely! I wrote MRP systems for a pharma manufacturing in Florida and the kind of stuff I had to do on a daily basis far surpassed the complexity of your breathtakingly-beautiful but typical project-management webapp or customized T-shirt webstore. Let me be clear, complexity has absolutely nothing to do with the merit of one product vs. another. KhanAcademy code could be simple as 2nd grade math but nothing I ever write will ever be as beneficial to the world. However, complexity is expensive, takes time and dedication, and rarely pays off in the short-term. There is a reason most supply chain software installations run in the millions to tens of millions. Here's an example of something I wrote while ago: A drag & drop scheduler in JS, kinda like Google Calendar that lets you schedule production jobs on different equipment, across different labor teams. When you change a single job on the schedule, it auto-calculates the entire requirement for the entire company. Moving one production job up (say shampoo for customer A) could end up in the company losing $500k because one of the ingredients that went into shampoo for A also goes into conditioner for customer B. This particular item has a lead time of 3m from China. And since order for B is significantly larger in amount, every single day of delay is money actually lost because you bought all the other raw materials for B on credit from the bank and now have to pay interest on it, while it just sits in the warehouse waiting for the raw material to be flown in from China. Of course, this is something you want to avoid in the planning stage itself. And that's what the software does and warns the user within seconds of making any changes. One tiny bug in the code, say it doesn't correctly factor in the internal lead time from QC (this particular chemical needs to be sampled for microbiological contamination) and you just delay the project by a week. Putting up a pretty website is hard work but it is nothing compared to hiring 20 people to spend 3 months mapping out the multi-stage routings for 500 different SKUs. No tech-VC wants to invest in businesses that require a tremendous amount of operational labor. That's what banks are for. ~~~ astrofinch Working on a project like that sounds like a lot of fun. I guess there must not be very much money in it though because every company requires custom software, eh? ~~~ arethuza There is actually a _huge_ amount of money in that space - think Oracle, SAP and many others. ~~~ nickpinkston *If you're good at direct enterprise sales... Most startup guys I know prefer PR, metrics, A/B testing, etc. over this type of meat and potatoes type of work. ------ kariatx "In fashion, trust me, that are MANY problems that need to be solved: a highly antiquated supply chain, non-standard, un-linked computer systems, non- standard sizing that varies even within the same line, inefficient pricing methods." I don't see why internet fashion companies couldn't take a crack at solving / mitigating at least some of these. For example, there are some sites (like zafu.com - no affiliation) that help women find jeans that fit. They can't change the sizes on the jeans, but I'm not holding my breath for the fashion industry to make sizing any easier any time soon. I also disagree with her claim that discoverability is not a problem. A lot of people are trying to solve it, but I don't consider it solved for myself (or other women I know). I find the choices in women's fashion to be overwhelming (to say the least), and I'm still looking for the more efficient ways to find clothes I like. I agree with her overall point that the number of trendy affiliate fashion sites is getting tiresome, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't be developed in interesting ways. It may be true that affiliate sites need to sell a ton more in order to compete with "click-and-mortar" fashion companies, but I'd argue that affiliate sites can also be more innovative, flexible, and forward thinking. If you're not shipping or manufacturing, you can iterate more quickly. ~~~ melanie_io I was actually discussing this very point with a good friend of mine who also runs a fashion startup the other day. To refine what I said: it's not that discoverability is not a problem, it's that all of the new fashion apps (from Lyst to Fashism to Inporia to Svpply to Google Boutiques) seem to have only increased the "noise" versus decrease it. In fashion, customers pay for the edit: a small, curated collection of products that an editor has determined best fits her customer's profile. To argue that we can somehow replace this very right-brained activity with crowdsourcing or algorithms is untenable. ~~~ chime > To argue that we can somehow replace this very right-brained activity with > crowd-sourcing or algorithms is untenable. For now maybe. Ten years ago if you asked me if I'd spend 2 hours watching a movie because a computer said so, I'd laugh. Netflix recommendations, while not perfect, are still very good. Had I not told Netflix that I loved District 9, it would not have suggested Torchwood: Children of Earth to me. Had it not suggested Torchwood, I wouldn't have discovered that Doctor Who was back on air. Right now I get about 50% of my entertainment discovery done via algorithms. Sure, fashion is difficult and subjective but I don't see it as being any different from music or entertainment in the big picture sense. Btw, that was a very well-written article. Thanks for sharing. ~~~ jfarmer It is different. When buying clothes people ask questions like "Will my girlfriend think I'm sexier?" or "Will the kids at school think I'm cooler?" Fashion is a kind of performance -- people see what you wear, after all -- so there's an inherent social dimension that isn't obviously present like it is with movies on Netflix, which you watch in the privacy of your own home. People, not robots, will win the day when it comes to shopping online. ~~~ encoderer The core of these recommendation algorithms is often a flavor of nearest neighbor analysis. In this case, the computer is using attributes to find people who are similar to you, and then suggest to you things that they liked. All the "robots" do is find people who it thinks you would like to emulate. That sounds like the same thing the fashion industry has been doing for decades. ~~~ jfarmer Robots don't merchandise, that's the problem. For many people decisions about what to wear is very intimate, but algorithms are bloodless. The who, where, and how matter much more in fashion. Algorithms miss that. ~~~ div I think a strong algorithm may surprise you. I remember reading about the Netflix contest and how one of the algorithms categorizes movies into it's own statistically relevant categories*. Once a comparative algorithm is used and the dataset gets large enough, I have no doubt the recommendations will start to get real good real fast. [http://devlicio.us/blogs/billy_mccafferty/archive/2007/01/02...](http://devlicio.us/blogs/billy_mccafferty/archive/2007/01/02/netflix- memoirs-top-contender-divulges-algorithm.aspx) ~~~ jfarmer What I'm trying to say is this: it's not about a "match" between the product and the potential consumer. The who, what, and how of the recommendation matter almost as much as the product itself. Just the fact that I know this recommendation came from a human counts for something, especially if it's a human I trust or respect when it comes to fashion (not necessarily a friend). e.g., a celebrity wearing a shirt and having it sell out the next day. Movies are different because their consumption isn't inherently conspicuous. I do it alone and talk about it with friends if I choose, but everyone sees the clothes I wear no matter what. For example, I can choose to hide the fact that I love Katy Perry, but I can't hide the fact that LVMH made my handbag. How you dress is a performance, and so the decision to wear something is filtered more rigorously through a social dimension than watching a movie or listening to a song is. ~~~ encoderer In the context of my most previous reply above -- how would you feel about reccomendation algorithms that pull more visibly from your own social graph -- Friends, yes, but also people you follow on Twitter and Like on facebook. That seems almost a perfect marriage of my comments on the innate human quality behind a nearest-neighbor algorithm your comments here. ------ bermanoid _Take, for example, a traditional retailer such as Opening Ceremony. After shipping, merchant fees, packaging, and COGS, they produce an average gross margin around 40% (the industry standard) – after accounting for photography expenses (which most affiliate sites do not have), let’s say the margin is around 30%. Whereas a fashion site that generates revenue mainly from affiliate fees will collect only 3-8% of the revenue on each sale. That means that the new, lightweight fashion site must sell 4x-10x more inventory than Opening Ceremony in order to produce similar profit margins. On the hierarchy of risk, figuring out a way to sell 10x more than your competitor in order to just stay in the game is a much larger risk than the inventory management issues of a traditional retailer._ We're seriously comparing B+M company with gross margins of 30% to a lean startup receiving affiliate fees of (let's take the worst case, even) 3% on a product and suggesting that the affiliate has to sell 10x as much "in order to stay in the game"? Plain and simple, _you cannot compare these numbers_ , they have absolutely nothing to do with one another. That 3% affiliate fee is as close to pure, unadulterated gravy as you can get in business - it's profit practically from day one, regardless of volume. It's probably being chopped up between three dudes working out of a garage somewhere, whose entire set of business expenses comes down to some electricity, a few meals a day, and a $0.34 / hour large EC2 instance. If their volume went up by a factor of 10, then maybe they'd need to add another few servers (each of which is probably making them thousands of dollars per hour, if it's pegged). With affiliate marketing, if you've got high volume, your margin approaches 100%, since your expenses are pretty much independent of your sales (unless you're reliant on advertising, which to be fair is another matter altogether) - would it then make sense to say that traditional retailers need to sell 3x as much product to stay above water? No, because it's an apples to oranges comparison. Now, if you wanted to claim that in order to have similar _total_ profits to the traditional retailer the startup would have to move 10x as much product, we can start talking. But the point is, they don't _need_ as much profit to compensate everyone involved at the same level - that traditional retailer probably has at least 10x as many people employed per unit sold as the startup does, and the startup's advantage there scales much better with increasing volume. It certainly may be the case that pure-online fashion sites are fundamentally doomed to fail for some reason, but if so, the article offers no real evidence. All we've seen is an argument that would also imply that Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, and most other online product sales businesses should fail, because they all have much smaller profit-per-unit figures than traditional brick and mortars. ------ jfarmer So, I'm going to toot my own horn here, because this article is extremely well timed. (Note: her site is down now, thanks HN! :P) This line of reasoning is exactly why we decided at Everlane to start manufacturing our own apparel. You just don't capture enough of the value if you exist as a pure discovery layer unless you (somehow) get everyone and their uncle visiting you, looking to purchase, i.e., Google. The internet does afford you the opportunity to redefine how people shop, but sorry: you're probably going to have to really sell things. If that sounds rad, come join us and send me an email at [email protected] _Edit_ : Just noticed the article is about a month old. So, well-timed, but not timely. ~~~ robozome PS - if your site demands this: Access my basic information: name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends, and any other information I've shared with everyone. Send me email Post status messages, notes, photos, and videos to my Wall Access my data any time Everlane may access my data when I'm not using the application [and more....] I instantly discard the possibility of ever signing up for an account. ~~~ jfarmer We've tested the page, and this converts no worse than the alternatives. ~~~ redthrowaway What were the alternatives? Requests like that are a huge turn-off for me. Ask me for my email, sure. Ask for the ability to post spam on my wall and I've just closed the tab. It may convert alright, but it also drives away potential customers. Why not give me the option to subscribe by email? ~~~ prof_hobart I'm guessing it's because you're likely not their target audience. A lot of people are more than happy to let whoever asks have permission to spam their Facebook feed with free advertising. ~~~ jfarmer We don't spam anyone's Facebook feed, for the record. We will post something if and only if you click "post to Facebook." ~~~ prof_hobart Why don't you wait until the first time that they user wants to post something before asking for Facebook details. I'm sure you are completely honest, and wouldn't abuse the permissions you've been granted. But I don't like giving out any more personal details (phone #/email address/Facebook profile) than I absolutely have to. But then I guess I'm not really your target audience either. ------ switch Not really a well thought out article. Here's why - 1) Why should anyone care about solving the problems that the writer of this article wants to see solved? 2) She fixates on the 3-8% that affiliate sites make without considering a few things: a) Sites make that regardless of where the user actually buys. So if someone comes to your site and decides to buy a jacket you make money whether they buy it from Retailer A or Retailer B. b) It's usually 10% for fashion sites and once you are driving larger volume you can cut deals for 15%. c) If you become the decision engine (something Google and Bing are trying to do with their Flight Search and other initiatives in various verticals), then you can easily take over the entire business. If people are coming to you and you help them decide what to buy - then you can start selling them that stuff. 3) The costs and barrier to entry is much lower if you are trying to fix the discoverability problem. 4) The real problem, and the most important thing, is the role of fashion. What fashion really does. That can be tackled completely in the online world through a website. 5) Fashion is a market that is going to make a lot of startups a lot of money. Things that signal status (such as special electronic brands and designer bags and Grey Goose vodka) are never going to go out of style. Instead of listening to this writer's advice, any company going into fashion should look at how backward thinking most people in the industry are, how little they understand technology, and how they are unwilling to admit the core purpose of fashion. The easiest entry is discoverability and influence and that's also the most powerful element of the fashion ecosystem. If you become the discovery engine and the decision engine then it's game over for everyone else. All those VCs funding fashion startups are not idiots. ~~~ rokhayakebe You may want to give her more credit. She did a fashion startup for a few years. About the 3-8% affiliate fees, that's not a viable business model. You would have to deliver north of 15M dollars to get 1M dollars. Assuming the average ticket is $150, you need 100,000 conversion. The average internet conversion rate is 3%. So you need 3M uniques. That is not very easy to get. Even if you are buying it. ~~~ switch Give her more credit for what? She did a fashion startup for a few years and she never figured out that nearly every luxury company gives 10% to 15% commissions? If she really thinks it's 3 to 8% then she's blissfuly ignorant. She doesn't get the fundamental concept of capturing the starting point. If a site becomes the destination for fashion i.e. where people go to search for the next thing they buy. Then that site can very easily expand into selling that very thing. At some point we say - Instead of getting 15% from this luxury watch maker, we ask for 25%. Then we say - Let's make stuff ourselves and see if we can get more than 25%. What Google is doing and what Facebook is trying to do is very similar. Expand and take over all the profits. But first you need to be the starting point or decision point for something (search, social interactions, dating, buying clothes). ~~~ rokhayakebe Do you have an example of a site that started as an affiliate and ended up creating its own products? I think this is would be very very difficult. ------ ig1 This article misses a huge point, it assumes <10% affiliate fees are the end game for these startups. If one of these startups manages to get significant market share, what stopping them from building a supply chain down the line (or acquiring someone who has a good one) and using that to tripple profit margins. It sounds to me that these startups are thinking "lets not waste a lot of money investing in a supply chain (ala webvan)". The quality of your supply chain might help you drive down costs, but it's going to do little to increase your market share. The marketing and shop-front are the biggest factors that are going to impact market share, so it makes much more sense to focus the investment in those areas and outsource everything else until you're ready to expand. VC's aren't stupid, they're looking at the bigger picture. ------ colinloretz The best example of a fashion startup I've seen is Indochino (www.indochino.com). They were faced with many of these issues and have gone and taken full control of their end to end supply chain. They are selling "physical fucking product" but they are making it more personalized and custom tailored (pardon the pun), direct to the customer. I don't have much need for wearing a suit these days, but the moment I do, they will be the first and only place I go. In the beginning they even offered education to their customers around things like 1) selecting the right suit for the occasion 2) various types of ties/ways to tie a tie 3) type of cuffs, etc. They seem to have gotten rid of the education aspect of the business but I found it really helpful as someone who like fashion but doesn't know much about it. ~~~ epicviking I actually think Indochino is an example of someone focusing too much on the "physical fucking product" and missing some chances to do some real innovative stuff. They could potentially offer some really neat customizations, possibly even a full "internet bespoke tailor experience" kind of thing, but they avoid that in favor of more dumbed down aspirational product that tries to sell itself as something it isn't. As for wanting to learn more, I'm currently teaching a university of reddit course on menswear customs, history, and how tos. Its under menswear 101. Go check it out. ~~~ viraptor I don't really agree. Maybe it's "dumbed down" experience comparing to a private tailor. But at that price range just getting out of the "standardised sizes" and getting details you want is worth it. Kind of like what <http://www.tailorstore.co.uk> provides. Barely anyone has actually heard about online stores like that. Amazon is the default. Why offer more customisations when people are not really ready for the basic customised experience? ~~~ epicviking I think Indochino would benefit from pushing the customization angle though. As it stands now they are simply offering a product not unlike Banana Republic with a bit more customization in the lining and a bit in the sizing. I think the number of people who want custom suits is a lot higher than you think (not to mention, Indochino's business model is highly dependent on return customers) and aiming more for the market currently only filled by traveling Hong Kong tailors might be in their better interest. I do think they are going in that direction though. ------ andreasklinger I run a fashion startup involving sampling, serial production and fulfillment. I couldn't agree more with Melanie. The risk aspect sizing and inventory management is a bit downplayed imho. Stocking breaks necks. Good merchandising is more important than breathing oxygen. Btw i would also appreciate HNs feedback on my company: <http://www.lookk.com> \- if there is interest i could do a "show hn" post. ~~~ epicviking You really would benefit from sorting the items you have for sale. At the least Man and Woman. ~~~ andreasklinger Thanks for the feedback. The shop is yet very MVP-like. We are currently working on it. ~~~ amac Interesting. Why did you decide to re-brand as Lookk from Garmz may I ask? (I took about 12 months to find the Lifemall name for my site) ------ shaanbatra "In the end, Fashion 2.0 is really not that much different than Fashion 1.0, in order to win, one must focus intently on building a better product that solves a real problem – you know, just like every other successful business in the world…." So true. People are so focused on 'social' that they are ignoring the real problems. ------ badclient What companies is she even talking about? Because the best fashion-related startups that I am aware of are super revenue and retail focused. I am talking about renttherunway, or this other startup that sells subscriptions to product trials etc. ~~~ jfarmer She's talking about sites like Pinterest, Svpply, TheFancy, etc. ------ reinhardt The start-up I am contracting for is in a similar business (homeware and interior design) and has recently made the same decision to shift focus from a low margin, high volume affiliate model to a low volume, high margin "boutique" model. Curious to see how it pans out. ~~~ OWaz The low volume & high margin fashion site probably has a good chance of being successful as long as it carries recognizable and fashionable brands. The reason I say that is that sites like Net-a-Porter and MrPorter (which probably are mid volume) seem to be doing quite well based on the few articles I've read. Below is just one in case anyone is curious. [http://www.nypost.com/alexa/p/the_top_shop_2HqqVcU4pRZJisg0N...](http://www.nypost.com/alexa/p/the_top_shop_2HqqVcU4pRZJisg0NinioK) ~~~ reinhardt Recognizable fashionable brands such as John Lewis do fine on their own and are not going to give up a large chunk of their margin to a middleman. The biggest challenge for the new business model is try to discover and push less known brands or brands with little/no online presence with high quality products. ------ girlvinyl One of the three cited examples of success in the article - One King's Lane - isn't a fashion/apparel retailer at all. It's a home decor and furniture flash sales site. ------ astrofinch Wouldn't you want to solve the customer acquisition process 1st and then re- factor your supply chain once your customer base is large enough to warrant the effort? ~~~ jfarmer Now you have to build two successful products: one to acquire customers, and one to sell to them. ~~~ astrofinch You mean one to acquire customers and one to do customer fulfillment. And customer fulfillment is useless if you don't have any customers. This seems obvious. ~~~ jfarmer No, I meant what I said. Why spend time and energy building a huge consumer success if your goal is to sell things? Name some successful online commerce companies that started that way. Most (I won't say all) started as pure commerce, e.g., Gilt. If you're ShoeDazzle selling shoes for $40/month, your customer acquisition problem is fundamentally different than a site like Svpply. If you want to sell things, sell things. Don't try to play 3d chess. ~~~ astrofinch Could you provide support for your assertion that the customer acquisition problem is fundamentally different? ~~~ jfarmer 1\. ShoeDazzle can afford to pay for customers 2\. ShoeDazzle needs far fewer customers to generate significant revenue 3\. ShoeDazzle's value proposition is much clearer -- either you want shoes to buy Kim Kardashian shoes, or you don't 4\. Users join a site like Svpply vs. a site like ShoeDazzle for very different reasons. There's just so much evidence that you can build a successful online retail presence without going through the first stage that it honestly seems stupid to me. Warby Parker, Bonobos, Gilt, One King's Lane, Jack Threads, BeachMint, ShoeDazzle, BirchBox, Rent the Runway, etc., etc., etc. just opened a f(*&ing store. ~~~ astrofinch Thanks! ------ Hisoka I agree with her ideas for the most part. You need tremendous scale to make something like ShopStyle profitable. But even if you sell stuff, it's hard to differentiate yourself from the crowd as well.. and if you do software for the back-end.. ugh.. maybe it's because I'm into consumer web, but I can't imagine how to market to those type of companies who have age-old processes that are incredibly hard to overthrow. ------ diolpah This is a good read, and the author hits on some solid observations about the online apparel industry. That said, I am shocked about the claim that a single VC has funded an apparel retailer recently. I am in this industry, and I can assure you that it is about as unsexy as one could get from a VC perspective. I would love to know who all these recently funded apparel businesses are. ~~~ jfarmer Uhhh, what? Not all apparel, but: ShoeDazzle, BeachMint (StyleMint/JewelMint), Rent the Runway, Warby Parker, Gilt, One King's Lane, Send the Trend Anyhow, the list goes on, and it includes us at Everlane (<http://www.everlane.com>). Some of these (including us) are vertically integrated. ~~~ diolpah It seems I'm completely out of the loop, having heard of none of these except for Gilt. Thank you. ~~~ jfarmer I forgot Trunk Club [http://allthingsd.com/20110908/trunk-club- raises-11-million-...](http://allthingsd.com/20110908/trunk-club- raises-11-million-to-shop-for-men-who-hate-the-mall/) ~~~ diolpah That article is just incredible. $11MM raised, assuming 25% dilution, giving them a ~$44MM valuation on only $1MM in revenue? I had not the faintest idea there was a huge valuation bubble in my own industry. I am a little bit shocked.

Things I Wish I'd Known Before Using Vagrant - zwischenzug https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/10/27/ten-things-i-wish-id-known-before-using-vagrant/ ====== scrollaway Here's what I wish I'd known before using Vagrant: 1\. How to properly do cross-platform, high-performance two-way synced folders between host and guest. Most providers only support one-way syncing. Virtualbox has shared folders, but their performance is pretty lousy and they have issues with relative symlinks. In fact, I still don't fully know what the correct setup is for a dev environment where the files are edited on the host and the guest immediately picks up on them... 2\. This idea that with vagrant you'll never again say "It works on my machine" is a lie. So many inconsistencies between Vagrant on Windows, Linux and macOS. Internet connection sharing, line endings issues, symlinking issues, ... If anyone wants to see how we're using Vagrant: [https://github.com/hearthsim/hearthsim- vagrant](https://github.com/hearthsim/hearthsim-vagrant) I don't want to make it sound like Vagrant isn't solving a real problem though, it is. It's just not the unicorn it claims to be. ~~~ stephenr 2 has been a big issue with a recent client because Virtualbox is a fucking pig in terms of features and performance compared to the commercial alternatives. My advice is to cough up an hour or two salary and pay for parallels or VMware (if on Mac) ~~~ cytzol I've been using Vagrant + Virtualbox and have been happy with it. Is Vagrant + VMWare really that much of a step up in performance? Could you explain which features have been helpful? Thanks. ~~~ RussianCow Not the parent, but anecdotally, Vagrant + Parallels runs MUCH faster on my 15" MacBook Pro than Vagrant + VirtualBox. VM startup time is shorter, and CPU usage seems to be lighter. For instance, I worked on a project where I had a long-running process that would do a lot of file I/O and periodically collect the results and run some calculations. On VirtualBox, this basically pegged a CPU core while it was running, but when I switched to Parallels, CPU usage hovered around 5%. (I'm guessing this particular example is more to do with VirtualBox's dog-slow shared folders, but still relevant, I think.) ------ wildpeaks A couple more for the list: 11\. Shared folders get setup before provision scripts are run 12\. You can detect provision has already run ([https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/936#issuecomment...](https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/936#issuecomment-288063253)) using: if File.exist?(".vagrant/machines/YOUR_BOX_ID/virtualbox/action_provision") 13\. Vagrantfile configs are actually Ruby scripts, so you could do things like storing your box configs in JSON (like I did in [https://github.com/wildpeaks/boilerplate-vagrant- xenial64](https://github.com/wildpeaks/boilerplate-vagrant-xenial64) ) instead of hardcoding them in the Vagrantfile. 14\. Virtualbox needs Hyper-V disabled whereas Docker for Windows requires Hyper-V enabled. ~~~ djsumdog > Vagrantfile configs are actually Ruby scripts I took advantage of this by storing all my settings in YAML and then using the same YAML for both Vagrant and my Ansible provisioner: Here's the Ruby Script that loads the YAML: [https://github.com/BigSense/vSense/blob/master/core/vagrante...](https://github.com/BigSense/vSense/blob/master/core/vagrantenv.rb) That I call from my Vagrant file: [https://github.com/BigSense/vSense/blob/master/core/infrastr...](https://github.com/BigSense/vSense/blob/master/core/infrastructure/Vagrantfile) That is also loaded in all my Ansible roles: [https://github.com/BigSense/vSense/blob/master/ansible/bigse...](https://github.com/BigSense/vSense/blob/master/ansible/bigsense.yml) ------ corford One thing thing I can add to this that was driving me nuts (though not strictly Vagrant's fault): The DHCP client on Ubuntu 16.04LTS doesn't always play nice with multi NIC vagrant machines. All my vagrant boxes are dual NIC (eth0 is the standard 10.0.2.x NAT interface and eth1 is a private interface in the 192.168.56.x range with a static IP - which makes it easier for various vagrant machines to talk directly to each other). I had an infuriating issue where my boxes would startup and then randomly (it seemed at the time) stop responding to network requests. Initially I thought they were hanging for some reason and would tear them down and re-init them. Finally thought to enable GUI mode and I noticed that even though a box had stopped responding, I could login fine via the virtual box GUI. It turned out that Ubuntu's DHCP client was ignoring /etc/network/interfaces (auto generated by vagrant) and wrongly refreshing IP leases on both interfaces (eth0 and eth1). The trick is to kill the running dhclient during provisioning and restart it with switches that force it to only maintain leases for eth0: machine.vm.provision "shell", inline: "kill $(pidof dhclient) && /sbin/dhclient -1 -v -pf /run/dhclient.eth0.pid -lf /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient.eth0.leases -I -df /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient6.eth0.leases eth0" ~~~ throwanem That's not even a little bit Vagrant's fault - that's 100% Ubuntu nonsense, the sort of thing that convinced me about a decade ago never to install Ubuntu again. Sure, running Debian means if you want the latest and greatest you might have to build it yourself. But it's also much less likely to hose you for stupid reasons. I'm glad to see that the state of play has improved so much in the intervening years! ~~~ corford I'm also a Debian fanboy (been my preferred distro since "potatoe" days) but I had to switch to Ubuntu for the first time for this current project. It's not all bad but I'll return to the warm embrace of Debian for my next project. ------ therealmarv I wished I'd known that Vagrant + Windows is always full of surprises. So many problems with Windows developers because Vagrant will not work as expected there :( Anybody know any best practices what to do with Windows developers? I'm thinking of going to docker... but I'm not sure if this really helps. ~~~ throwanem > Anybody know any best practices what to do with Windows developers? I always just run a Linux VM and do most things there, with host directories cross-mounted via Cygwin sshd and sshfs (faster, more reliable, and better permissions mapping in my experience than Virtualbox shared folders) and anything that needs to take advantage of filesystem capabilities not supported in NTFS, such as the symlinks mentioned in a sibling comment, done outside a mounted directory. This lets me get work done, but it's a suboptimal experience to say the least, and relies heavily on my prior systems administration experience to _stay_ working when it goes weird. Absent such experience among your developers or at least someone you can put in support of them, about the best I can recommend is to struggle through with Vagrant and your local handful of best practices - at least with Vagrant your dev environments are reproducible, so that when things go too cattywampus you can just burn down the VM and pop a fresh one out of the oven and get back to work. (If your Vagrant boxes _aren 't_ reproducible, that's the first thing you want to fix.) Docker for Windows is not going to be an improvement here; on the one hand, it's newer and less battle-hardened, and on the other, it has to run in a VM anyway. (Either Hyper-V or VirtualBox, each of which has its own idiosyncrasies, and only one of which can be used at a time - enable Hyper-V, VirtualBox doesn't work any more.) Docker for Windows, like Docker for Mac, comes with some plumbing that tries to smooth over the impedance mismatch between platforms, but it's lossy and brings its own headaches, so you're just adding more complexity to the dev env for no real gain - you can just run Docker in your Vagrant boxes, if you actually need Docker, and have one fewer headache that way. ~~~ corford Similar approach here. I usually have a "management" vagrant box that exposes my gitrepo back to the Windows host with samba. I then have two or three other vagrant machines that can access the same gitrepo via an NFS mount to the "management" machine. This way I can still code in VSCode on my windows host but I do all my git commits via the CLI on the "management" vagrant box. The advantage with this approach is file permissions don't get messed up and symlinks work (i.e. you can follow and edit them on the windows host). The only major disadvantage is if your repo has symlinks you can't create new symlinks on the windows host and you can't use Git for Windows (and, by extension, the git addon for VSCode). This is because Samba "fakes" symlinks on windows and doesn't truly support them (although it might be able to do so in the future). More info here: [https://github.com/git-for- windows/git/issues/1195](https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/1195) ------ glenscott1 If you work with other developers and store your Vagrantfile in source control, then you can allow per-developer settings using the method shown here: [https://www.glenscott.co.uk/blog/allow-per-developer- vagrant...](https://www.glenscott.co.uk/blog/allow-per-developer-vagrantfile- customisations/) ~~~ stephenr I prefer this method: [https://gist.github.com/stephenreay/2afd4205e76836f20e176722...](https://gist.github.com/stephenreay/2afd4205e76836f20e17672238a10957) Same basic idea but plain ruby constants no need for yaml parsing. ------ bauerd I was a long-time Vagrant user but recently switched almost completely to Docker (Compose). What features does Docker miss that make people keep using Vagrant? ~~~ RussianCow To give a counter-point to all the praise here, Docker for Mac has been one of the most frustrating pieces of software I've had to use for work. It has improved significantly over the first time I used it (almost immediately after public beta), but I still occasionally run into various bugs, such as inotify events ceasing to work arbitrarily. Any kind of networking that makes your containers visible to the host/on the local network is also a PITA to set up through the VM that Docker for Mac uses. It's also supposed to abstract away the fact that it's actually running in a VM, but I have had to tweak the VM's CPU/memory settings multiple times, and it's not obvious when you have to do this. On top of that, last I checked, Docker for Windows is still missing some features like inotify events, and requires you to enable Hyper-V, which of course removes your ability to have other VMs running simultaneously. The other side of it is that Vagrant is just easier. Docker requires everything to fit into a "one container per service, one process per container" model, which is a really good idea in production, but makes setting up background services (such as the Flow server) in development way harder than it needs to be. I'm not a devops person, so the extra overhead of trying to figure this all out is significant. Vagrant isn't without its own technical problems, but it mostly Just Works™, and I can do anything to the VM that I'd do on a regular Linux machine. As someone who really doesn't care how these things work under the hood, Vagrant has been a significantly smaller source of friction for me. ~~~ mschuster91 > Docker requires everything to fit into a "one container per service, one > process per container" model, which is a really good idea in production, but > makes setting up background services (such as the Flow server) in > development way harder than it needs to be. No, it does not. I use Docker as vagrant replacement too, and use a self- written bash script as "init script" that: 1) launches all services required (e.g. apache, mysql, sshd, elasticsearch) by running "service XYZ start" 2) records the pidfiles of each service (/var/run/xyz.pid) 3) sleeps 10 seconds, waits for all the pids having exited - if yes, exit the initscripts, if not, go back to #3 4) on SIGTERM/SIGINT, gracefully shut down the services _in the correct order_ (e.g. apache/php first, then elasticsearch, then mysql); the watcher loop of #3 will detect all services having shut down and exit cleanly This way I have _exact_ reproduction of a real target server and don't have to deal with the myriad of issues that arise with docker-compose and "custom networks". Also, the documentation on how to set up a production server, especially the required OS packages, is embedded right in the Dockerfile (or, as I put the setup script in its own file, in this one). Build time for an image with identical functionality is approximately equal to what it was with Vagrant. In contrast to vagrant, once you build that image initially it starts up way faster (10s for a LAMP+es stack), and provisioning it is a breeze compared to puphpet or whatever is the trend now. And you don't have to update your setup script unless the base OS changes, as compared to puphpet+vagrant - in fact I can use nearly the same setup and init script across stuff as old as Debian 6 (some ancient proprietary software I had to dockerize) over Ubuntu 16.04 and as brand new as Debian nightly. ~~~ RussianCow I used the wrong wording: I should have said that Docker _encourages_ one process per container, not that it _requires_ it. It's possible to do most of the same things with Docker as you can do with a VM, including implementing a full-blown init system, it's just a matter of effort. Having said that, what you did is definitely non-trivial (at least it would be for me), and you've basically re-implemented all of the stuff Vagrant gives you for free, for a pretty marginal benefit (IMO). Maybe that setup works better for you, but I don't understand why I should go through all that effort when Vagrant Just Works™ most of the time, and Docker for Mac runs everything through a VM anyway. ~~~ mschuster91 > but I don't understand why I should go through all that effort when Vagrant > Just Works™ most of the time Problem with Vagrant is you can't take the VM you created and deploy it on any random Linux server (or random Docker-hosting cloud provider) - while a pure Docker solution can be deployed literally anywhere with Docker support, as long as you give it a way to persist the data directories of the services. docker-compose is a hit-and-miss across hosters, and you can't use it on DC/OS or Kubernetes environments. I use my script collection mainly for dev environments, but it's useful when you want to spin up QA/dev instances without having to provision real servers. ------ conradfr If you're a PHP dev (or even not) check [https://puphpet.com/](https://puphpet.com/) I generate my Vagrant files for all my side projects with it and it's a real time saver, especially if you're not savvy in those fancy provisioners or sysadmin in general. ------ drinchev Vagrant's private network is really cool as well. I use it to test ansible provisioning scripts for server infrastructure. config.vm.define "ums-01" do |machine| machine.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.1.10" machine.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 22, host: 2210, id: "ssh" end config.vm.define "ums-02" do |machine| machine.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.1.20" machine.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 22, host: 2220, id: "ssh" end \-- [https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/networking/private_network.ht...](https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/networking/private_network.html) ------ wkral I'd advise caution with the use of landrush, at my company it was very quick to get up and running using it, but we encountered several problems with it over time. We have several vagrant boxes coming up and down at various times on each developer's machine and it would tend to get out of sync in various cases, hold on to records for machines that no longer existed and macOS DNS cache also played a role. Eventually we replaced it with Dnsmasq and a static IP setup with each development box getting an immutable static IP. Dnsmasq runs on a guest VM that needs to always be up for other purposes as well. As always the effort from the landrush developers is much appreciated and it may be suitable for a limited number of boxes but it didn't scale with our usecase. ------ mitchty Here's my advice go to GitHub and type: filename:Vagrantfile thing you're looking for You'd be suprised how many hidden gems are on GitHub that you can use to figure out how to use vagrant. This tip applies more generally. ~~~ amorphid I often find Google searches for GitHub gists to be super useful. <stuff you care about> Vagrantfile site:gist.github.com ------ invisiblea \- Vagrant Triggers plugin is super useful [https://github.com/emyl/vagrant- triggers](https://github.com/emyl/vagrant-triggers) \- I've found VMware Fusion as a provider worth the extra cost/disk space ~~~ stephenr Do you find vmware base box availability an issue? Is it just you or a team using VMware? ~~~ mafro Creating your own base boxes is actually pretty straight forward since Packer. Maintaining them is admittedly a bit of a time sink though. ~~~ stephenr Haha I'm aware. I'm the maintainer for [https://app.vagrantup.com/koalephant](https://app.vagrantup.com/koalephant) \- I was curious about vmware+Vagrant usage, we don't support it right now but I'm considering adding it. ------ msielski Also big fan of vagrant global-status. I have it aliased to vgs in my terminal. Also very helpful for those using Vagrant on OSX is Vagrant Manager [0] which gives you menu-bar integration and a quick interface to turn VMs on and off. It's useful even to remind myself when I've left some VMs on, especially if I'm running on battery. [0] [http://vagrantmanager.com/](http://vagrantmanager.com/) ------ achiang We've avoided many of the problems (and solutions) in the link by standardizing on Ubuntu laptops for the host OS, and using vagrant-lxc to run our vagrant guests. [https://github.com/fgrehm/vagrant-lxc](https://github.com/fgrehm/vagrant-lxc) At least one or two of our new hires started with OSX hosts, but switched to Ubuntu after a while, to avoid virtualbox pain. [edit: added vagrant-lxc link] ------ mister_mister For me vagrant works best with declarative configuration and a runner. something like this, with sane defaults and many options available by changing fields in a dictionary. [https://github.com/Attumm/vagrantfile_example/blob/master/Va...](https://github.com/Attumm/vagrantfile_example/blob/master/Vagrantfile) ------ nicolasbistolfi Fore me something that inclined me to use vagrant, was the share feature, so I can let anyone in the world check my development environment. Now they deprecated that feature and [https://ngrok.com](https://ngrok.com) does the job very well. ------ pasta Ofcourse this depends on the kind of project, but my last experience with a big Laravel project was that I was running the project working under Apache on my local machine and the rest of the team was loosing a lot of time because Vagrant was not working as expected. I can understand the need for reproducible environments. But when so much time is lost I doubt the first thing you need is something like Vagrant. To me Vagrant is a tool that you use when the team starts to struggle with "works on my machine". But not before that. Because most of the time (well for PHP at least) it's very easy to make it work on all machines. ~~~ pivotal I've had quite the opposite experience. Vagrant has saved my team lots of time fighting environmental issues. The approach of running apache locally falls apart pretty quickly as you add more components to your application. Elastic search, mongo, one person happens to have php 7 instead of 5.2 and wrote everything with short array syntax, etc. We also work on many different projects, often getting dropped into something new without much of a primer. Being able to "vagrant up" and not having to know all the dependencies to get up and running is very handy. Do we spend time troubleshooting vagrant weirdness? For sure, but compared to the time saved it's a no-brainer. ~~~ samsonradu I tend to agree with the parent comment, a small team can get away without it if the software stack is stable. PHP 5.2 to 7 is quite a change and should have been documented upfront. I assume that the project must conform to certain software requirements. On the other hand, npm is full of surprises. ~~~ pivotal I don't disagree that if you can get away with just a local development environment that it is likely easier to get up and running. However, it requires good documentation of project dependencies and discipline by the team to not accidentally upgrade their version of PHP without telling anyone, both things that are easier said than done. Vagrant lets you codify that through "code". In the case of my employer, it's a necessity, but obviously everyone is different. ~~~ samsonradu Agreed, but the “Vagrant doesn’t start” saying is a real thing imo. Maybe it’s my experience but it doesn’t feel very robust. ------ damagednoob I've used Vagrant extensively in the past but since I found docker-compose, I haven't reached for it over the past year. ~~~ mafro Docker and Vagrant are two very different tools. ~~~ welly Are they? Very different? Not really. ~~~ Can_Not I'm pretty fustrated reading comments like these because there are use-cases where these tools are pretty much the same and use-cases where these tools are wildly different and you guys are going back and forth arguing semantics that are totally meaningless without the context or use case. ~~~ ahnick I think the parent's point is that for the majority of web development use cases (which I'd wager was a large percentage of the Vagrant user base) Docker has eliminated the need for Vagrant. Agreed, though that there are times when you need to simulate software running on a particular machine and for that Vagrant is still useful. ------ jeffshek Another thing to add to the list is you can set Paravirtualization Interface if you're using VirtualBox. If your defaults are currently on "Legacy", empirically we saw 10-30% speedup by switching to "KVM". ------ pmontra There used to be a problem with running Vagrant on VirtualBox with more than 1 CPU: [https://github.com/rdsubhas/vagrant- faster/issues/5](https://github.com/rdsubhas/vagrant-faster/issues/5) Explanation and workarounds: [http://www.mihaimatei.com/virtualbox- performance-issues-mult...](http://www.mihaimatei.com/virtualbox-performance- issues-multiple-cpu-cores/) Did they fix this? ------ jeff_vader My top tip: install your dotfiles into any Vagrant VM without modifying anything in the VMs Vagrantfile/provisioning scripts: [https://gist.github.com/tadas-s/0cd468a4cc9fa4cafce6fe57a5dc...](https://gist.github.com/tadas-s/0cd468a4cc9fa4cafce6fe57a5dce123) ~~~ stephenr Because you said "without modifying anything in the vms Vagrantfile" I assume you put this in $VAGRANT_HOME/Vagrantfile? Also, nice username. You'll need a tray. ~~~ jeff_vader No, you put that Vagrantfile with provisioner installing your dotfiles into $HOME/.vagrant.d/ folder. Every time vagrant creates or starts any vm it will sort of "extend" its configuration by reading $HOME/.vagrant.d/Vagrantfile (if it exists). ~~~ stephenr Um yeah. That's the default location for $VAGRANT_HOME if you don't set the env var. ------ bryanlarsen 11\. Virtual Box sucks. Try out alternatives, I like vagrant-lxc. ~~~ pmoriarty Could you elaborate on why you think VirtualBox sucks? Or why you think vagrant-lxc is better? ~~~ bryanlarsen VirtualBox is slow (especially sharing files), we've had lots of problems with it becoming corrupted, and requiring a fixed partition of RAM makes it very hard to run more than one VM without starving your VM's or host of memory. vagrant-lxc has none of the above problems, it is just containerization with no virtualization penalties. I've had lots of people tell me that Vagrant sucks. When digging into their problems it's almost always been VirtualBox causing their problems. ------ waibelp Thank you for "vagrant global-status". There's still a lot of boxes I don't even remember. ~~~ zwischenzug You're welcome! ------ marksellers I've done development with all the databases, languages and packages installed on the host machine, as well as with vagrant. With the VM, I have to ssh in, or switch windows to run tests, whereas before I could just run the tests in vim. How do people achieve fluency with these? I suppose I could install some more of my tools on the VM, but if you take that to its absurd conclusion, I'm just running a clone of my host on the VM. It seems more useful, maybe, to just run databases and other services in the VM. Those are the more difficult bits to manage usually. A good programming language already has version and package management facilities. Or perhaps am I missing something? Anyone have another workflow? ~~~ conradfr Jetbrains IDE has a good SSH & Vagrant support so mostly I create tools/tasks that launch through ssh (or use the built-in ssh client but that's like any console except you can stay in the IDE), same for the database tool. ------ zimbatm Another thing that's good to know: vboxfs (the default VirtualBox file-sharing filesystem) doesn't support mmap(). The are quite a few software that use mmap to access files, especially databases. When that happens, either avoid using the shared folder or switch to using the nfs mount. Here is the ticket about it that's been opened 10 years ago: [https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/819](https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/819) ------ vlunkr Adding swap really is critical. Machines running out of swap was causing my MBP to crash ~once a day, enough that I ran linux on it for a while (it was more stable for whatever reason) until we figured out what the issue was. ------ cwaffler I highly recommend lando. Basically an easy to use CLI wrapper for docker apps. [https://docs.devwithlando.io/](https://docs.devwithlando.io/) ~~~ ahnick From a development perspective, what's the advantage here over just using Docker Compose? Is it the baked in recipes that it provides? ------ ironjunkie Is anyone really using Vagrant for anything more than quick tasks on your local dev machines? I always perceived Vagrant as a hack. ~~~ raziel2p What would you do instead if you want to test things that need to run on actual VMs? Configuration management or whatever. Is booting a VM at a public cloud provider any less of a hack? ~~~ vultour Last time I did this I just created a base VM that had Ansible set up and anytime you wanted to get the latest environment you just ran a script. Although I admit that I'm sort of an infrastructure fanatic and love Ansible, so that might be why I steer away from things like Vagrant. ------ tonetheman Yup yup this is a good list. Thanks for mentioning landrush, it is something I could have used. ------ grabcocque Vagrant's documentation leaves something to be desired. It's perfectly possible to control many VMs from one Vagrantfile, but good luck figuring out how from the docs. I mean with a bit of ruby knowhow and some digging you can figure most stuff out, but Vagrant's documentation still lags behind Hashicorp's other stuff which is usually very well documented. ~~~ zwischenzug Yeah, that's been my experience too. Which is a shame, as it's an incredibly powerful tool, it just lacks the 'last mile' stuff that Docker did so well.

High-Speed Rail – Japanese Shinkansen vs. TGV – Is One Better Than the Other? - Osiris30 https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=p3zrqotjw7A ====== mikixa Over the Shinkansen's 50-plus year history, carrying over 5.3 billion passengers, there has been not a single passenger fatality or injury due to train accidents.

(Not so) Scary terms in offer letters. - wheels http://venturehacks.com/articles/not-so-scary-terms-in-offer-letters ====== timcederman Fine when I checked. ------ motoko 404? flagged for broken! ~~~ nivi Fixed. =)

Ask HN: Quitting without anything lined up? - jhatemyjob Graduated college in 2018 and got a job at a startup immediately after graduating. After about a week I realized I hated it. Weird company culture, bad micromanager, disgusting codebase, no WFH. It&#x27;s not terrible but there are certainly better jobs out there. I decided to stay; the pay is decent and I had a lot to learn (about being professional, office politics, marketing, knowing when you have PMF, sales, branding, stock options, <i></i>NOT<i></i> engineering). Just for a year though. Then I was gonna switch to another, better job.<p>What I didn&#x27;t anticipate was being incredibly burnt out. I want to quit and not work for a while. Issue is I heard that&#x27;s &quot;bad&quot; around the Internet.<p>Here&#x27;s what I have going for me:<p>* I can live with my parents at any time for as long as I want no questions asked.<p>* About 10 months in I started getting regular pings (2x per week) via email&#x2F;LinkedIn from recruiters for various other jobs, varying from startups to Uber&#x2F;Facebook&#x2F;Google.<p>* I have been shipping production-quality software since 2007. Based on my experience at this startup I believe I have the equivalent of 8 YoE but that&#x27;s hard to put on paper.<p>* I have friends at various other companies that could refer me.<p>Basically my career goal is to bootstrap a SaaS company and either turn it into a lifestyle business or get acquired for like $1-5M. The job market is a backup plan for me. I&#x27;ve had 2 engineering jobs at this point and I fucking hated both of them.<p>Will this recruiter outreach stop once I quit? I&#x27;m also kinda worried about closing the door to Google&#x2F;Facebook&#x2F;Uber but honestly I&#x27;d rather work somewhere that let me work part time remote so I could focus on my own stuff. Working on other people&#x27;s code blows and I&#x27;d prefer to do as little of that as I possibly can. ====== WheelsAtLarge Best advice, bite the bullet,stay and make sure you have a job before you quit. While it might be easy to find a job once you quit there's a big possibility that you can fall into a situation where it's easy to not get a job for a long time or you can't get a new one. If you hate the job you have then use that as motivation to get a better job. Also make sure you are really in the career that you like. What you describe in your job is not out of the ordinary when it comes to having a programming job. Work is work that's why they pay you instead of you paying or you doing it for free. ------ 1k This is an easy one - go for it! With your age, experience and accessibility to support from friends and family I think the upside far outweighs the downside. You haven’t mentioned any financial commitments (loans, dependants, filial support, etc) so presumably you have none. You will probably regret not going for it more than sticking with something you hate. ~~~ jhatemyjob Yeah I'm definitely gonna quit. Just kinda scared of closing doors by not having something lined up before I quit. But maybe I'm just being paranoid ------ nartz Nah, just start interviewing, and spend more time getting offers to find a company you might actually like. Avoid starting something until you see what doing it correctly looks like. You can always start your thing on the side, and transition when it becomes more than a side project. Plus, it is 100% easier to do while you have a salary. ------ techjuice The doors are always open for great talent, modern skills in demand and professional experienced engineers. If you want to go on your own path that is fine and normally the best path if you want to have more control over your time and freedom for the short and long term. ~~~ jhatemyjob Yep control over time and freedom is my goal. Thank you for the encouragement.

Learning to Superoptimize Programs - chivalrous https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.01787 ====== sanxiyn This work should be read in context of prior work, STOKE: [http://stoke.stanford.edu/](http://stoke.stanford.edu/) This work outperforms STOKE, and STOKE outperformed existing methods including GCC, LLVM, ICC, traditional superoptimization, expert human, etc. That's why comparison with existing methods are omitted. This work is also limited to Hacker's Delight and automatically generated programs, but so was STOKE. But STOKE readily extended to computational kernels in libm, BLAS, OpenSSL, ray tracer, computational fluid dynamics, etc. You can read about them on the link above. The next step would be applying the improvements to other STOKE tasks and more. STOKE is an open source. ~~~ nickpsecurity That sounds pretty awesome. So, are these only instruction-level optimizations or is there a good toolkit for doing it SSA level as well? My idea being combining it with formal, equivalence checks in certified compilers so we get optimizations plus ensure correctness given original version was correct via certified transform. Certified to v1 -> superoptimize to v2 -> certified checker (v1, v2) -> rinse repeat. ~~~ jfbastien souper: [https://github.com/google/souper](https://github.com/google/souper) ~~~ nickpsecurity Hell yeah! Appreciate it. ------ gcc_programmer This article uses a very contrived data set (bit manipulation), and also a "synthetically generated dataset", which would never occur in real life applications. This means that the results are unreliable and need to be repeated on something more realisic, or at least on programs that are uses by peole in some context (spec2000, spec2006). Moreover, the authors never compare the performance with that of llvm or gcc on different levels of optimisations, or at least do not mention any of that. ~~~ bunelr The authors of the original Stochastic superoptimization paper performed some comparison with the outputs of gcc. You can find their results in this paper: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StanfordPL/stoke/develop/d...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StanfordPL/stoke/develop/docs/papers/cacm16.pdf) This is on the same type of dataset, as admittedly, these methods still don't scale all that well to extremely large programs. ------ crb002 Where is the source? It's not science until you can reproduce their result. ~~~ carlob Probably here soon [http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~tvg/code.php](http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~tvg/code.php) You might also say that it's not science until it's been peer reviewed and this is a preprint from 2 weeks ago… ------ coldcode Even if this was useful, it presumes the ability to prove a application correct while modifying it. This would only be doable in very limited circumstances not general purpose applications. ~~~ psi-squared (edited to add: Note that superoptimization isn't something you do to a whole program, it's more a thing you do to speed-critical sections of a larger program, ideally on the order of a few dozen instructions at most. That alone makes things a lot more tractable) (edit 2: I've read the relevant papers now, and have corrected some of the stuff below. Corrections are in italics.) _The paper says that this system is built on top of STOKE, which uses the following verification method:_ * Generate a random set of test cases * Each intermediate code block gets instrumented and run on the host processor * The intermediate code block are given a cost depending on how different their results are from those of the original block _on the current test set_ , as well as an estimate of the running time * _If we get a code block which is correct on all the current test cases, we ask a theorem prover whether it 's equivalent to the original one._ If it isn't, the theorem prover spits out a test case which proves they're different, and we add that to the test set for future iterations. Finally, the fastest few provably-correct results are output, where they can be further tested in a full run of the original program they were taken from. The main room for error here is in the theorem proving step, which requires knowing the full semantics of the host's machine code. But it feels like that part should be share-able between different projects, as it's pretty much independent of the search method used. ------ cnkal This technique is only as good as the objective function. In most real world scenarios there is no canonical objective function, nor a comprehensive test suite exercising all branches of the code. ~~~ sanxiyn While your point about objective function is correct, optimizing compilers still manage just fine with imperfect objective function, and superoptimizers do better. So "as good as objective function" is good enough. This work proves functional equivalence, so no test suite is necessary. ~~~ cnkal > optimizing compilers still manage just fine with imperfect objective > function, Imperfect or not, optimizing compilers do not require an objective function at all. The majority of computer programs do not have an objective function. ------ bloaf As someone not well versed in compilers, this approach seems bizarre. 1\. Given some chunk of a program, we should know ahead of time which I/O preserving transformations are available to us, because math. 2\. Random search isn't going to find you some kind of Godel-esque situation where the optimized instructions are equivalent to the un-optimized ones in an unprovable way, _especially_ when one of your steps is "prove equivalence." So my question would be: why don't they just randomly apply I/O preserving transformations to the problem, skip the "output similarity" step, skip the theorem proving step, and just optimize against whatever actual performance benchmark they used? ~~~ sanxiyn Because we "should", but actually don't, know ahead of time what semantic preserving transformations are available. The entire point is to discover them. If you find this bizarre, consider that your semantic preserving transformations should be able to do examples in Figure 12 and 13 of [http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/publications/papers/asplos...](http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/publications/papers/asplos13.pdf) ~~~ bloaf But it seems to me that the fact that they _have a theorem prover at all_ means they _do_ know ahead of time what semantic preserving transformations are available. ~~~ dom0 No. They have a verificator that can show that two (sub-)programs (more accurately; that an applied transformation preserves semantics) are semantically identical. This is a bit like a P-verificator for the solution to a NP-hard problem using a certificate. It can only help you prove that the solution is right, not find new solutions. ------ currriuosly TL;DNR how it differs from usual performance optimization? ~~~ unlikelymordant It is entirely automated, it can be thought of kind of like googles alphago. A neural net is used to guide monte carlo search, though it is working on the space of programs and optimizing running time. Instead of using known rules, it can learn its own optimization rules for software. ~~~ eutectic Note that this uses Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling rather than the Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) of AlphaGo, although the latter might also be interesting to try. I suppose one disadvantage of naive MCTS is that if it made a supoptimal decision near the root, correcting that mistake would require relearning the rest of the program from scratch. Maybe there could be some bidirectional variant of MCTS, where you search from both the beginning and the end of the program and join the two fragments in the middle. If the two trees work independently, can they still learn to find the optimal solution?

The Accidental Room - garycomtois https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/ ====== iambateman The magic of 99pi is humanization. If I found out people were living in an empty part of the mall in any other context, my response would be: “ehh weird.” But 99pi presents the story and by the end they seem like heroes sticking it to the man. ------ mips_avatar I feel like 99pi is becoming more like This American Life. They’re both great radio programs but 99pi used to produce content that shon a light on an interesting but lesser noticed aspect of our daily lives. Like this episode could have been a this American life episode. It was mostly just an anecdotal experience from a unique person. Maybe focusing a little on property developers. Maybe it’s true that Roman Mars is just too talented to stay in his niche, but I’d be pretty disappointed if he just became budget Ira Glass. ------ csours Strongly reminds me of Mrs Basil E Frankenweiler [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Mixed- Up_Files_of_Mrs...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Mixed- Up_Files_of_Mrs._Basil_E._Frankweiler) ------ RyJones this is great. In a previous life I would bid construction jobs, and it was noticeable how much dead space you would end up with in say, a high school or a prison. Nothing like this, though. ~~~ jessaustin Now that everyone is worried about energy efficiency ("net zero" etc.) it seems like architectural malpractice to create large conditioned but unused volumes. ~~~ derefr Why? Given that nobody’s in it heating it up (in any other case), wouldn’t it mostly serve as a ballast of cold air—a bit like having a larger freezer to contain the same amount of food? I’d think it’d _increase_ the energy efficiency of dealing with a new hot body entering the space, since there’s so much more already-cold air to spread the heat into. ~~~ jessaustin (In Providence they're not only concerned about AC.) More to the point, most of these volumes would extend all the way to the roof, which is the primary heat transfer boundary in a large squat building like this. It's unlikely that these areas see the draft-proofing that inhabited areas do. We now know that uncontrolled movement of air through boundaries is the largest source of HVAC inefficiency. Has a building inspector ever actually entered these areas? Without energy input, any enclosed volume will tend to converge to the outdoor temperature. Human comfort will require that energy input. ------ ilikepi I believe the same folks were also responsible for a secret art installation that included a bunch of hanging mannequins inside a nearby drainage tunnel. I remember hearing about it around the same time as the discovery of the mall apartment. I've only been able to find a couple[0][1] references for it though. [0]: [http://www.insanebunkers.com/index.php?topic=1244.0](http://www.insanebunkers.com/index.php?topic=1244.0) [1]: [https://youtu.be/LKdbYh5uoJA](https://youtu.be/LKdbYh5uoJA) ------ kqr2 If they had occupied the room peacefully for 10 years, I wonder if they would have squatter's rights: [http://www.landlordstation.com/blog/what-are-squatters- right...](http://www.landlordstation.com/blog/what-are-squatters-rights-in- rhode-island/) _If squatters are using a property consistently without the permission of the owner for a minimum of 10 years, then a claim can be filed to take over title_ of the land that is being used. _ ~~~ pavel_lishin I think squatters typically require conspicuous occupancy, not a hidden one. Otherwise someone could secretly build a shed in a secluded corner of someone's property, and claim rights to it. ------ grenoire Audacity is I think the best word to describe what they've done, but definitely in a good way!

Developers should not be allowed to work overtime - techdog http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/03/developers-should-not-be-allowed-to.html ====== chris11 I really agree with this. I had the good fortune of getting an internship at an engineering firm that was managed really well. Management did not seem to assign overtime work needlessly. It was an engineering firm set up to work on long term construction projects. So the the work load was cyclic. My boss mentioned that there were times that there was almost nothing to do. So people ended up taking vacations around those times, and sometimes worked less hours. But during crunch time, people would end up working 6 days a week, and longer hours. It seemed like it was appropriate though. The increased work load had a defined reason, and people knew that once they got finished with the majority of the contract, they would work less. Management seemed to be of the opinion that overtime was a symptom of bad project management. Some of the technical areas where very specialized, so the available work force was small. So they were stuck with overtime. But all overtime request had to be approved by senior management (vp of finance if I remember correctly). And employees were compensated time and a half for all overtime. So management had an incentive not to work overtime. That firm showed me that I really don't have to accept unpaid overtime, there are jobs where it isn't a problem.

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + ... = -1/12 - anigbrowl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww ====== ivan_ah Oy mate! Don't you have a pint of cider to drink in a cozy pub somewhere instead of producing videos of such bollocks? The series $\sum_{n=1}^\infty n$ is divergent, so you can't say anything about its sum. For more info on the 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 +1 ... see: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Grandi's_series](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Grandi's_series) This quote from the page is telling: G. H. Hardy dismisses both of these as "little more than nonsense." ~~~ mathnoob It is not totally nonsense but the use of the benign sign = associating the analytic continuation of a series where it converges to a place where it does not without huge warning is not very rigorous. ------ abc_lisper Properties of numbers change at infinity. It is not conceivable to me, we can use normal arithmetic operations on quantities tending to infinity. For example, consider this... 9999999999........... infinity -9999999999........... infinity ------------------------- 00000000000............ infinity ------------------------- Now, subtracting infinite numbers from infinite numbers should give a infinite result. All we have is infinite zeros here, which cannot be inifinity. ~~~ kazagistar You cannot understand "infinite numbers" without understanding how equality is defined (bijection). ~~~ abc_lisper Ok.. My post was a bait :).. Please tell me more or can you suggest me some books i can read?

How ICE Picks Its Targets in the Surveillance Age - johnny313 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/magazine/ice-surveillance-deportation.html ====== mindgam3 Companies referenced in the article: \- Vigilant Solutions \- Giant Oak, whose founder was quoted in the article as saying "the better we have entity resolution” — that is, the better we can compile and measure people’s data — “the less of a surveillance state we’ll have.” \- CLEAR (Consolidated Lead Evaluation and Reporting), a product of Thomson Reuters, with "real-time access to address and name-change data from credit reports and to motor-vehicle registrations in 43 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico" \- Appriss Safety, which runs a database called Justice Intelligence 1\. [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/07/eff-responds- vigilant-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/07/eff-responds-vigilant- solutions-accusations-about-eff-alpr-report) 2\. [https://www.giantoak.com/](https://www.giantoak.com/) 3\. [https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/clear- investiga...](https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/clear- investigation-software) 4\. [https://apprisssafety.com/](https://apprisssafety.com/) ~~~ bredren Note Vigilant was acquired by Motorola Solutions in January. ------ generj This article was chilling for me. I lived for six months in a town off the Oregon Coast by Hwy 101, just like the town in the article. I can vividly picture the ICE agents stopping people on their way to work. More terrifyingly, this data infrastructure could be turned to any purpose by a future government. This represents a fundamental shift in how effective Totalitarian governments can be. They have the ability to be more focused, even scientific in repressing opposition. It is insane the Washington licensing department had no clue where their residents drivers license data ended up. That the federal government side steps its own privacy guidelines by simply buying commercial datasets shows how deeply flawed the third party doctrine is. It is clear that legalization is needed in this area. ~~~ beerandt The crazies fighting against realID suddenly look quite sane. Yes, DMV info was for sale before that, but the data wasn't as extensive, mostly wasn't biometric, and wasn't standardized for national consumption. ------ asciident Okay so it wasn't mainly Palantir helping ICE, though they had a role. It was the DMV.

Amazing robotic dexterity from Honda's ASIMO - dusanbab http://www.wired.com/2014/04/honda-asimo ====== dusanbab Direct ASIMO demo video link: [http://condenastl3cdn.cust.footprint.net/videos/53501be36970...](http://condenastl3cdn.cust.footprint.net/videos/53501be369702d3275860000/low.webm)

Hitler Quote Controversy in the BSD Community - animeseinfeld https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/11/21/1750218/hitler-quote-controversy-in-the-bsd-community ====== rurban Slashdot cannot even summarize the issue properly. FreeBSD just removed some tasteless and offensive Hitler quotes from the fortune database. It did not remove fortune as stated. [https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/usr.bin/fortune/datfile...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/usr.bin/fortune/datfiles/fortunes?r1=325095&r2=325781&pathrev=325781) I haven't checked yet who inserted that quotes. Personally I would flag that person for intensive study.

Does anyone remember websites? - dfps http://tttthis.com/rememberwebsites.php/ ====== dogcow Check out the search engine at [http://wiby.me](http://wiby.me) From their about page: _Search engines like Google are indispensable, able to find answers to all of your technical questions; but along the way, the fun of web surfing was lost. In the early days of the web, pages were made primarily by hobbyists, academics, and computer savvy people about subjects they were interested in. Later on, the web became saturated with commercial pages that overcrowded everything else. All the personalized websites are hidden among a pile of commercial pages. Google isn 't great at finding those gems, its focus is on finding answers to technical questions, and it works well. But finding things you didn't know you wanted to know, which was the real joy of web surfing, no longer happens. In addition, many pages today are created using bloated scripts that add slick cosmetic features in order to mask the lack of content available on them. Those pages contribute to the blandness of today's web. The wiby search engine is building a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet._ ~~~ Zhenya My favorite website: [http://www.otherhand.org/](http://www.otherhand.org/) And my favorite article on it: [http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and- rescue/the-hun...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the- hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/) (No association) ~~~ martinpw That article was a fascinating read. Thank you. ~~~ livatlantis Ah yes, I remember stumbling into this page when looking for cold-case/solved mystery stories. I got through all 13 pages in one afternoon! Excellent story and writing. ------ ambrosite I do remember those websites. For me, the difference is that now the Web is much more useful, but back then it was a lot more fun. True, you could sometimes waste hours following random links hoping to find something good, but the thrill of discovery when you stumbled across a gold mine of information was a huge part of the appeal. Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything they want within seconds. That makes the Web on the whole much more useful, but the thrill of the hunt is gone -- that's what Jakob Nielsen was referring to all those years ago when he talked about "information scent". [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/information- scent/](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/information-scent/) ~~~ userbinator _Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything they want within seconds._ Almost anything popular and rather insipid, yes. Try to find more detailed information on very specific topics, however, and you'll discover that search engines like Google have been optimising more and more for the former content, making it harder to find the latter. I don't think that's a good thing at all. To add insult to injury, if you do try very hard to seek the latter by carefully repeating similar search queries with slight word tweaks, quotes, and trying to dig through all the pages of results to see if you've found what you're looking for, Google will quickly decide that you're a bot and either give you a CAPTCHA or just ban you for a little while entirely. ~~~ rayiner Google is not great for finding stuff. I’ve complained at length about how bad it is for doing research, but recently I’ve also found it’s totally useless for finding things like reviews of products (unless it’s something like the new iPhone). It’s like legitimate reviews are a casualty in the war between Google and clickbait SEO crap. ~~~ JohnBooty This is true. The only way I can find product buying advice is: 1\. To find a community of enthusiasts and see what they have to say about products in that space. This works pretty well for products that actually have enthusiasts. 2\. Go to Amazon and read a product's _bad_ reviews. The good reviews are nearly useless. But, with bad reviews, you have to weigh the number of bad reviews against the product's popularity. If something has twelve negative reviews, that means _very_ different things for a product that sells 10 units a month versus a product that sells 50K units a month. 3\. Read the tiny handful of reliable product recommendation sites. Cool Tools, Wirecutter, annnnnnnd.... I'll let you know when I find another one. ~~~ q845712 I bought a subscription to Consumer Reports and have been happy with the two purchases I made on their recommendation (headphones in the $100 range, and a new food processor). Do you consider them compromised? It's actually just about time to renew my subscription and i've been wondering whether I should. I've also used your strategy of reading the bad reviews on Amazon! ~~~ r00fus The appliances I bought using their advice has been hit/miss - ranges are decent but the fridges and dishwasher I bought are noisy and required service barely outside warranty period. These are big name brands too. I don't necessarily fault CR but I with the hundreds of models released all slightly similar but different (I hear partly to prevent price-matching across stores) it must be as impossible to review for CR as it is for consumers to keep track of. ~~~ nickpsecurity I wouldn't count the appliance reliability against CR as this great article shows appliance industry is doing it on purpose: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13909365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13909365) Typical cartel-like, profit-boosting activity of oligopolies which appliance market seems to be with a handful of companies owning most brands. ------ kaoD > This article can be discussed on r/TTTThis. Oh the irony. The web has changed: in some ways for the worse, and in others for the better. I remember websites being like a lottery: sometimes you'd hit jackpot but most of them were "Under construction" GIFs over ugly tiled backgrounds. There is still ton of content and much more than what I would've dreamt on the 90s. Platforms like Reddit allow _everyone_ , whether they know HTML or not, to publish their own content and even comment on others'. Yes, Facebook and Twitter suck, but that's mostly it. I'm very, very grateful for everything else on modern internet. This smells like 'memberberries. ~~~ dfps I didn't put discussion on the page in order to keep it as code-light as possible. Reddit is a good option for discussion (at the time of writing), especially considering I didn't want to clutter HN up with a discussion page for each article (no problem on a subreddit). I agree with you on the value of reddit and platforms (and I actually value Facebook-type platforms as well, with the obvious qualifications), but the old html sites I write about here have a different type of construction, material, and value. (- The author) ~~~ kaoD > the old html sites I write about here have a different type of construction, > material, and value. These still exist. They are prettier and more content packed than the 90s ones you're reminiscing about, and there are many, many more than there used to. I honestly think you're seeing the early web with rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. Unless you liked the DIY amateurish hacker feel of it (which I agree has its value on its own) I think they've changed mostly for the better. Just to be on the same page: what's exactly that type of construction, material and value you miss? What did you like of it? EDIT: After re-reading your original post I think I get your point. It's just... #RememberWebsites, _of course_ it's nostalgia-fueled! And that was the point of the post, right? Celebrating it (which I completely misunderstood as a celebration of websites themselves). There are still many. Here's one that might fulfill your oldschool needs: [https://www.justinguitar.com/](https://www.justinguitar.com/) ~~~ wolco Mobile changed websites into displaying less content. Are we better off? Scrolling forever vs clicking next page / last page. I think scrolling is worse if you ever want to find that piece of content again. ~~~ dualogy For developers, information breadth and quality was excellent when I first onlined in '98, and has improved by leaps and bounds year by year. For other stuff, I agree with that OP article, that was a uniquely rich caleidoscope that got "blandened" (now lost/gone/fully-transitioned) as the types of folks who'd craft such little labour-of-love sites mostly did so for lack of easier / more-convenient options that soon popped up first with prefab forums and prefab Wordpress / Blogger, then Tumblr/Medium/social-media. ------ themodelplumber This is pretty harsh critique. I first got on the web in 1992 and what we have now is a paradise compared to what we had then. Sure, you may have to look with intent for what you want, but freely coasting around the web has always carried liabilities. It used to be "you'll find lots of junk" and the junk has simply diversified since then. I also noticed the author doesn't even use a single hyperlink in his own article. Be the change you want to see. I was just checking out Project Rho. Before that I was building a link page of my own because I'm getting into ham radio. The old web we love is still here and it'll always be around in some form. ~~~ outsidetheparty > what we have now is a paradise compared to what we had then Here's how I recall it: Back in the day, you'd search for subject {$foo} and you would find mostly websites written by some cranky bearded weirdo who is obsessed with {$foo}, who has devoted weeks of his time to personally collating his every thought about {$foo} into one ghastly-looking site. Nowadays, you search for {$foo} and find mostly beautifully template-designed pages of text written by indifferent fiverr freelancers who had about 20 minutes to stuff in as many keywords into as many column inches wrapped around as many ad slots as possible before moving on to the next subject. I know which one I prefer. (I may exaggerate. But only slightly.) ~~~ always_good > Nowadays, you search for {$foo} and find mostly beautifully template- > designed pages of text written by indifferent fiverr freelancers who had > about 20 minutes to stuff in as many keywords into as many column inches > wrapped around as many ad slots as possible before moving on to the next > subject. Yeesh, does anyone else have this opinion? I sure don't. It's never been more trivial to find good, enriching content. How many of these posts are just HNers getting more crotchety in their old age? Sometimes it just seems like a pissing contest for who can be most cynical. ;) ~~~ outsidetheparty > more crotchety in their old age I will willingly cop to this. But seriously, genuinely yes, the internet is full of a lot more content-free clickbait than it used to be. Because clickbait didn't used to be a thing that existed. ------ jancsika I've never been particularly nostalgic for websites. I'm _slightly_ nostalgic for shared Windows folders on LANs at college dorms. I remember seeing the first South Park short from such a folder as it was going viral. I'm _extremely_ nostalgic for the original Napster. I don't ever remember searching for a piece of music and coming up short. And I remember it being a very sudden shift-- one month you're making a mental note to search for a CD you misplaced somewhere back home, the next month you're getting on Napster to check if the theme to Ghostbuster's 2 has lyrics that recount the plot of the movie. It does. A few weeks ago I typed "Battlestar Galactica" into Netflix, and guess what? It showed me lots and lots of results, _none of which were Battlestar Galactica_. And this isn't your run of the mill entitlement of a fool addicted to his Iphone apps. That is entitlement of a person yearning for modern functionality to match a shitty piece of software that saw its last stable release _15 years ago_. I'm having a hard time finding any numbers for the actual amount of music that was available on the original Napster at the time. Can anyone put some hard data to my rose colored glasses? ~~~ tomduncalf Check out Soulseek, it is very similar to how I remember the original Napster. Lots of obscure rarities on there music-wise, I've not tried it for anything else. The one P2P thing I am nostalgic for is Audio Galaxy - it had an awesome system where it they indexed everyone's content on their website, so you could see every file that had ever been on the network and add it to your "want list", then when that person came online, it would start downloading. To be fair "wish list searches" in Soulseek serve a similar purpose, but I loved that ability to browse every file that had ever been online! ~~~ sixstringtheory Soulseek is incredible, discovered all sorts of smaller-time musicians that never wouldve been sold at the Best Buy in the suburban wasteland of my youth. I can’t believe it’s under active maintenance after all these years! ------ schnevets 10 years from now, we'll be waxing nostalgia about entrepreneurs who made a living off Instagram, Amazon, WordPress, and other platforms. 'There was a kid who used to "rate dogs" and he was hilarious! And he did it for free without any corporate backing! Made a killing on T-Shirts and stuff as well!' ------ tonyarkles Last night I ended up, for some weird nostalgic reason, installing a Gopher client, just to see if there was anything still around. Amazingly, there's a bunch of blogs (called phlogs in Gopherspace) that people are updating regularly! Pretty amazing! ~~~ tree_of_item How did you find these Gopher sites? Is there a Gopher search engine, or is it just a hand-updated list? ~~~ dogcow Gopher is a great protocol. I never really used it back in its heyday; I'm not sure I knew it existed at the time (I didn't really get "real" Internet access until 1995 or so). I recently discovered it after having similar sentiments as the author of this article concerning the state of the WWW. After you get your Gopher client set up (lynx in the terminal works great), a good starting point is gopher://sdf.org There are many active "phlogs" published on SDF.org; there is also an aggregator that tracks some 20-odd phlogs at: gopher://i-logout.cz/1/en/bongusta (though it seems to be down at the time of this posting). The "Gopherspace" is a refreshing wormhole -- with a surprising amount of present-day activity -- into the Internet of yesteryear. I highly recommend checking it out and perhaps publishing your own content on Gopher if you're tired of the dumpster fire that is the WWW. ~~~ fasquoika On gopher://sdf.org: "Many people think the http protocol deprecated gopher, but that just isn't true. Where do you think gophers live? underground" Edit: more gold "After dumping linux and x86 in favour of return to real computers, we have not had any major security issues" ------ fiala__ > Most websites were written with html, so they were all unique. Every single website on the internet always was, is and will be HTML (with various kinds of XML/SVG markup sometimes). People just gradually realised proper and standardised web design makes the Web better for everyone, by making it more usable and accessible. I don't see why I should feel nostalgia for an Internet plagued by `<marquee>`s, poorly-laid out flashing gifs and bright yellow text on a white background. ~~~ Latty I saw a lot of people trying to avoid HTML in their websites in the past. The flash ones are the obvious example, but I once had the pleasure of an entire site that looked like any other, except it took forever to load and links worked weirdly. That was because the entire site was an image map over a giant .bmp for each page. ~~~ fiala__ Oh yes, totally forgot about flash and `<map>`s – but one could argue even those were originally designed to solve the problems of 'vanilla' HTML. They of course failed and HTML kind of prevailed, but only by being coupled with a massive set of APIs on the Web Platform. If it wasn't for those JS APIs, we might be stuck with Flash forever. ------ qznc They are still out there. Probably even more than ever. You just don't find them because the SEO-sites drain away all traffic. I believe my own site would qualify? [http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/](http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/) ~~~ sgt That would be interesting - a search engine that was resistant to most SEO techniques and allowed one to find these types of sites. Would be a great alternative to Google sometimes. ~~~ taftster The only search engine that is resistant to SEO is one that doesn't have enough traffic for any SEO to matter. If it's popular, it will be gamed. ------ clydethefrog See also the analysis (from 2015) of an Iranian blogger who got arrested in 2008 and got free in 2015 - he did not recognize the new web. (Ironically also posted on Medium...) According to him, hyperlinks turned into a social media stream. [https://medium.com/matter/the-web-we-have-to- save-2eb1fe15a4...](https://medium.com/matter/the-web-we-have-to- save-2eb1fe15a426) ~~~ username223 After blocking all the JavaScript and hiding the position=fixed garbage, that was an interesting article. > So I tried to post a link to one of my stories on Facebook. Turns out > Facebook didn’t care much. It ended up looking like a boring classified ad. > No description. No image. Nothing. It got three likes. Three! That was it. I write a blog, and publish links to posts on Facebook because doing so costs me nothing. It also gets me next to nothing. People click on those links about as often as Facebook asks me for my credit card to "boost" them. ~~~ gboudrias > hiding the position=fixed garbage Oh wow, I literally never want this behavior! Do you have a generic trick? "Inspect element" is tedious. ~~~ mabcat I have a "Kill Sticky" bookmarklet to do that job, as the first thing on my bookmarks toolbar. I'm clicking that thing all the time, it works great. So long stupid sliding navbars, enter-your-email popups, fixed video autoplayers, etc. I think I got it from here: [https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky- headers/](https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/) ------ pers0n Another thing is people often just go to Wikipedia, Wikipedia replaced the need for many fan sites. I had things copied from my sites and put on Wikipedia and tired to get a link back or a source mentioned and it was removed each time. So I lost motivation to even update fan sites, since whatever I type is going to get pasted onto Wikipedia with no link back. ~~~ cheschire And wikia. That replaced much of the need for fictional fan sites. I visit memory alpha weekly. ~~~ djur Unfortunately, Wikia looks like it's in the process of becoming a cautionary tale, with its recent move to start injecting its own video content into certain high-traffic wikis and a general decline in customizability and independence. ~~~ CM30 Wikia seems to be gradually being replaced by self hosted wikis, at least where larger fandoms are concerned. The Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance (Mario Wiki, Zelda Wiki, Bulbapedia, etc) are one example, the Square Enix Wiki Alliance are another, and I'm sure the likes of the Simpsons Wiki have moved away from the service as well. ~~~ Hedja Zelda Wiki is hosted on Gamepedia. It's like Wikia but specifically for Video Games and less obstrusive. ~~~ CM30 Well it used to be self hosted. Not sure I like the move much, feels like they're betraying the organisation they're supposedly part of. ------ Illniyar "it was largely a collection of websites made by people who were interested in some subject enough to write about it and put it online. " Oh,you mean like blogs? Seriously, this sounds like being nostalgic for it's own sake. I fail to see how using dreamweaver and ftp is somehow better then using Wordpress and the cloud, writing your own html as a prerequisite to having a website was never a good idea - now everyone can have their own website. I really don't miss the "glorious 90's" type of websites - with the thousand of animated images, weird background images and marquee everywhere. Sure it made every site unique - every site was terrible to the eyes in it's own special way. Also the idea that all sites now look the same is quite preposterous - sure a lot of sites are cookiecutter websites - especially marketing websites, but there are tons of unique designs - especially for blogs and personal websites. ~~~ fphilipe > Oh,you mean like blogs? Yes, but before they all looked the same and were hosted on the same platform. I miss the days where you would encounter a blog filled with great content and with a unique look and feel. It's as if it almost burned in in my memory. I still remember how the website looked of some great articles that resonated with me. That's one of the reasons I dislike Medium et al. ~~~ Illniyar I don't think it matters where they are hosted, but I think it's disingenuous to say that all blogs look the same. Sure everything on medium looks the same, but there are many many blogs not on medium. Here, just after a simple search, a list of personal websites/blogs that look nothing alike: [https://www.themuse.com/advice/the-35-best-personal- websites...](https://www.themuse.com/advice/the-35-best-personal-websites- weve-ever-seen) ------ disconnected > Does anyone remember when you they stumbled on a new website written by some > guy and read his first article, then clicked back to his homepage and saw he > had a list of similar articles that looked like they'd be just as > interesting. Or, more likely, you clicked "back" on the "navigation bar" and it would 404 because the author messed up the links, since it was all hand crafted HTML. Funny stuff aside, there are still loads of "websites" out there. If I understand the criteria here, we are looking for mostly hand crafted pages maintained by individuals (or small groups) that have interesting content. Something, should I say, very "web 1.0"? Here's a good one. Make sure to check the GUI Gallery section: [http://toastytech.com](http://toastytech.com) User Friendly is always hilarious (unfortunately, updates stopped ages ago, but going through the archive is sill fun): [http://www.userfriendly.org/](http://www.userfriendly.org/) And here's something random, the best page in the universe: [http://maddox.xmission.com/](http://maddox.xmission.com/) Like I said, there are TONS of these out there. You just have to, you know, look for them. ~~~ Jaruzel We need a good search index of these and all the other sites likes them. Something that deliberately doesn't include pages from bigger sites or sites full of cruft. ~~~ discreditable It could probably be easily accomplished by filtering out sites that use JS libraries like jquery, etc. ~~~ fenwick67 "best viewed with" followed by your query (ex: "best viewed with" dragons) gets you lots of great old results in a regular search engine. It will grab any sites that said "best viewed with truetype fonts", "best viewed with Netscape" et cetera from the internet's heyday. ------ adrianratnapala It's clever of the author to use "website" in this more specific sense. Technically a "website" roughly means anything served as HTML over HTTP. But all us fogeys know what his title meant anyway. But I still think he protests too much. The style subject-oriented websites which the author is referring to evolved slightly and got the new name "blogs". The blogosphere might not be as popular as social networking, but it is still huger than the web of the '90s. ~~~ gfodor Eh, I don't think blogs are really that equivalent to old school websites. Blog, being short for "web log" implies a temporal-based feed of posts. Old school sites were often much more varied, webs of pages broken up by subject or topic with links scattered everywhere to the rest of the web. ------ p4bl0 This is why I really love initiatives such as [https://neocities.org/](https://neocities.org/) :). I don't have a use for it myself as I have my own servers, but I'm glad this kind of service exists! ------ ggambetta > Does anyone remember websites? These might be unfamiliar to anyone unexposed > to the internet before 2005 or so [...] it was largely a collection of > websites made by people who were interested in some subject enough to write > about it and put it online. Does the author mean web rings? I do remember these :) ~~~ dfps I wasn't exactly talking about webrings, but now I'd like to see one. Can you link me to one please? (- the author) ~~~ jacquesm [http://www.homebrewcpu.com/](http://www.homebrewcpu.com/) Bottom of the page. ------ dwheeler I understand the sarcasm, but really, there are a lot of "real" websites, directly controlled by individuals who post what they want. I point you to my own website, [https://www.dwheeler.com](https://www.dwheeler.com) .... it's not the latest in CSS, no Megabytes of JavaScript, and no cross-site tracking either. ------ minikomi I've found amateur ham radio stations are a good thread to tug on to find that older weird-internet. \- Look for the sites with 4-5 letter callsigns on them \- Go to their links page \- Keep going down the rabbit hole. EG. here's a few I just found googling: [http://www.qsl.net/kp4md/](http://www.qsl.net/kp4md/) [https://k7nv.com/](https://k7nv.com/) [http://www.w8ji.com/](http://www.w8ji.com/) ------ joeblau I thought about this a few weeks ago. I remember the late 90's actually searching around the web. Now there are so many walled gardens that individual creation is limited to posting a Medium blog or Facebook post. Today, I only visit a handful of sites and developer documentation. ------ shams93 I was a part of the Geocities team in 1998. Part of the reason a large part of the early web no longer exists is that many of these web pages were hosted for free by Geocities. Tragically when they were purchased by Yahoo, Yahoo decided to simply shred the early web, they decided it was not worth it to keep supporting the service and simply hit delete on a huge chunk of the content of the early web. ~~~ astura In fairness, Yahoo ran geocities for an entire decade before shutting it down. ------ arca_vorago I do, which is why many years ago I told myself I was going to make my websites as js free as possible. Pure, simple, readable html5+css is my long term goal. The thing is, this part of the web still exists, it's actually just simply harder to find due to the control on the filter big corps have these days. You just have to search. I am regularly adding hackers blogs to my bookmarks. Sometimes they stopped updating in 2012, but their writing still looks worthwhile. The real democratization of knowledge the internet offers to us is there for the taking if people would break free from their self-forged filter- bubble shackles. ~~~ acuozzo > I am regularly adding hackers blogs to my bookmarks. Sometimes they stopped > updating in 2012, but their writing still looks worthwhile. Can we start sharing these somewhere? I have several I'd like to contribute. ------ osteele I remember the NCSA Web Site of the Day, circa 1993. It was a page that listed new web sites that had appeared on the web, with a brief summary and link to each one. Many days there wasn't a new web site. Some days there were _two_. ------ davesque Unfortunately, a large part of the reason the web used to be fun is that there didn't used to be anything like it. The only way we can get that again is by inventing the next world-changing communications technology, not by trying to dig up the old web. It pains me as much as anyone else to say this since I got started on the web back in 1994 and experienced its early magic first-hand. ------ joosters _Another thing was that there was no dross, because everything had to be written and uploaded by a person._ Some rose-tinted glasses right there! ~~~ Semiapies Yeah, I've been on the web since NCSA Mosaic, and there was a lot of dross. ------ DamnInteresting As the operator of a website old enough to still have a "webmaster" email address, it can be hard to remain relevant in the age of Google's search monopoly. Their algorithm has become the de facto gatekeeper to the entire Internet, and it happens to favor newer content over old. Consequently it favors those crappy flip-shop[1] sites where "writers" find quality content, perform a mild thesaurus modification, and re-post it. The original source, where the actual research and writing occurred, is stomped into insignificance. Yes, perhaps I'm slightly bitter, why do you ask? Between that and the "Wikipedia wall," boutique websites have been an endangered species for some time. [1] [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flip%20shop](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flip%20shop) ------ halr9000 I'm "old" and I remember websites, and Bulletin Board Systems too, for that matter. But technology changes, and you gotta keep up, man. Don't let the kids bother you--they're just running through your yard to the next house over. It's a cool house, maybe check it out someone. ------ exabrial No. Even basic documentation sites now has to be a fricken enriched browser experience ------ zapperdapper Couldn't agree with you more! Now sites seem to be spread out across the behemoth sites like Medium and of course all the social media platforms. A lot of the fun and sense of adventure that was present in the early days of the web is gone. Now it's "just business" \- that blows! When did everyone get so obsessed with boosting their "online presence" in order to make a quick buck? I will also give a big thumbs up to Neocities. It's brilliant. There's a great retro feel to many of the sites there. People are having fun creating sites with HTML and a dash of CSS - for free. ------ mpetrovich One of the few websites I can still lose hours on: [https://waitbutwhy.com/](https://waitbutwhy.com/) ------ mdhughes As the former perpetrator of several hand-coded sites and blogs full of text organized by 52-card-pickup principles, going back to '80s BBS's, online services, USENET, and then Gopher and WWW on a University shared network… Switching to Wordpress (obLink: [https://mdhughes.tech/](https://mdhughes.tech/) ) and slowly reposting the stuff I want visible in an organized, searchable format with a consistent style and a nice CMS is the best possible improvement. My latest change is a "Starred posts" category, so I can surface the longer, more thought-out pieces and still have ephemeral content like semi-daily music links and status updates. Manton Reece's [http://micro.blog/](http://micro.blog/) is putting Twitter- like interaction under a blog framework, hosted on m.b or on your own site. Discovery of these things is still hard, and Google's ad-searching site unsurprisingly only surfaces ads, but [http://duck.go](http://duck.go) and social media (like HN) can point you at content you want to see. [ed: sp] ------ dickclucas Shameless plug but what he describes was partly my inspiration for building [https://nogradient.com/](https://nogradient.com/). It is very stripped down and minimal. Would love some feedback on it. ------ galfarragem That's just Capitalism. Once Capitalism takes over a system, everything is optimized for profit. Some diehard _hobbyists_ might remain but most convert. I'm still keeping 2 niche blogs.. let's see till when. ------ Chiba-City Early business Web was Decision Support and not ad distraction based. There were cool "calculators" that would match relocation zip codes in Tulsa most like my favorite DC zip code or pick optimum breed/age/weight dog food. Product Selection Engines (PSE's) were a different value proposition than product or brand promotion. They are fun to write for engineers because they correct purchase errors with IT good deeds like Consumer Reports but with user variables on priorities or constraints. The Consumer Web threw out a great deal of baby with the .com era bathwater. ------ HaoZeke For me the web is more alive than ever... Just look at the way static websites are taking over.. However JS is the real threat to websites, react and its ilk are not amenable to being stored long term.. Too many things break. ------ indigochill Does [http://3564020356.org](http://3564020356.org) count? It does appear to use Alexa for tracking now, but otherwise it looks pretty "home-grown". ------ citruscomputing I wrote a little program that does the "follow links and see if I find anything interesting" thing. It takes seed links, pulls all links that don't go back to the same domain, and then chooses 50 and repeats. Then there's another program to find the uncommon sites from everything gathered. Check it out at [https://github.com/riley- martine/water_skimmer](https://github.com/riley-martine/water_skimmer) ------ jumpkickhit Can't say I miss Geocities inundating the search engines. Still though, it was pretty fun when there were more than 5 or so websites to go to, like a lot of people tend to only do these days. ------ anthk [http://neoticies.org](http://neoticies.org) Welcome back :) I am currently doing a minimal OpenBSD site in Spanish :D ------ zacvivo I have been thinking on this idea lately and trying to build a tool to filter out the crap. What I have found is operators help, but the only things I have found to work are EDU sites, pre-2010 operator, and intext: welcome to my site. Beyond that, nothing seems to work to find complex content. I also thought about maybe making a tool to filter out content from the top million sites or so, but for now I am going to just use operators. ------ edflsafoiewq The site I remember feeling that way about was the Robot Wisdom Homepage, now preserved only on the WayBack Machine: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130409045156/http://www.robotw...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130409045156/http://www.robotwisdom.com/home.html) ------ scroot Ian Milligan has done some interesting work [1] on the history of GeoCities, including some archives I think [1] [http://www.ieee- tcdl.org/Bulletin/v11n2/papers/milligan.pdf](http://www.ieee- tcdl.org/Bulletin/v11n2/papers/milligan.pdf) ------ ForFreedom I started my career as a web designer back in the 1998-2000 which was fun then. People wanted gifs like crazy. ------ thallukrish This is what I wrote years ago in this blog [http://productionjava.blogspot.sg/2014/07/the-broken- web.htm...](http://productionjava.blogspot.sg/2014/07/the-broken-web.html) and I have been working since then to fix it. ------ jwm4 Steve den Beste's original website, USS Clueless, was a perfect example of early website/blog. ------ somberi I would like to add photo.net and particularly Philip Greenspun's "Travel with Samantha". ------ dredmorbius Joseph Wood Krutch: "bad roads act as filters... bad roads bring good people, good roads bring bad people". [http://www.escapist.com/baja/books.htm](http://www.escapist.com/baja/books.htm) ------ alkonaut Wait, we don't call websites "websites" anymore? What do we call them now? ~~~ Semiapies This is a variation of the "RSS is dead (but everything provides RSS feeds)" thing. ------ woodbot How about this for a website: [https://beakerbrowser.com/](https://beakerbrowser.com/) The Beaker Browser! P2P browser, bringing back (the web and) websites since 2017 ------ chewz I remember that spending time on a web was actually interesting back then. Interesting like discovering and learning something new not like browsing shopping sites and FB, Instagram because there is nothing else to do... ------ i6Respawns Yes I think I know how you feel. You might like reading books haha. ------ mamcx Something close today, Go to: [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/randomitem.php?p=1](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/randomitem.php?p=1) ------ dbshapco The Internet has become a carrier signal for advertising. ------ pythonist A very fine example of such site [http://www.jeffbridges.com/](http://www.jeffbridges.com/). ------ canoebuilder [http://fusionanomaly.net/nodebase.html](http://fusionanomaly.net/nodebase.html) ------ vinsingh0289 I have so many websites but never got much traffic on any one of them, so i forgot all domain name of the website i created long back. ------ bluetwo Remember when the Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" button was interesting and took you to one of these random sites? ------ ashtube The hit counter is what makes this website. ------ albeebe1 My website still uses tables [http://albeebe.com/](http://albeebe.com/) ~~~ DamonHD Here is my '90s vintage still alive and kicking (we were one of the first UK ISPs): [http://www.exnet.com/](http://www.exnet.com/) and a new old site also built with hand-crafted HTML but CSS rather than tables! [http://m.earth.org.uk/](http://m.earth.org.uk/) It's nonsense to say that such things no longer exist. ------ superkuh The web of the 90s is alive on .onion. ------ rch I think Ward's Federated Wiki approach could help bring some personality back to the web. ------ peterburkimsher The most ironic part to me is that the page is PHP, not static HTML. Although this type of style isn't common with the online web these days, it's still visible in offline caches of popular websites (e.g. offline Wikipedia). Pages load so fast, and the total file size is much smaller because of the lack of JS/jQuery/React/etc bloat. ------ starboy1996 Sure. If it's really worth visiting. You remember them somehow and never forget ------ tutuca It even has got a broken hit counter and all... 000020083 at time of reading :) ------ agumonkey resonnates with my previous comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15586839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15586839) ------ agumonkey recent re-found [http://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/](http://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/) great example of dense cool passion driven site ------ mfukar Things change, nostalgia happens. Nothing to see here. ------ EngineerBetter I remember websites, and I remember that some were made by women, too. The author seems to have only read websites made by men. ------ rogerweissman77 I have to bookmark everything. ------ blue100 I remember all those websites. ------ epigramx They are called home pages. ------ robertdicabrio i remember a website letmewatch.ch have any one heard it. ------ jimmeyotoole Member websites?? ------ tek-cyb-org is that a new app? ------ frik MySpace, Tripod, GeoCities, LiveJournal, and similar free hosted/services had a lot of interesting, weird, etc pages. It was easy and friction free to create a new site. Everyone had a copy of Frontpage/Dreamweaver/GoLive/HomeSite/iWeb/Composer on his PC and uploading worked with a browser form, one file at a time. ------ igorgue I miss them, they were a great example of how creative everyone can be, now doing "awesome" things on the internet is so cookie cuttered. ~~~ astura And "welcome to my website it is still under construction please sign my guestbook" isn't cookie cutter? ------ lovemetwotimes Nowadays, anyone with a basic understanding of search engines can find almost anything they want within seconds. ~~~ vog That's simply not true: Case in point: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15634089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15634089) (Unless, of course, you mean by "almost anything" everything of your personal interest.) ------ koancone The problem is the advertising model for content monetization. This is the same reason TV is mostly crap. ------ SimpleLogin It really is interesting how incredibly niche everything was once upon a time. ------ keerthivar very interesting website, and easy time pass ------ keerthivar easy identify methode

In the World of Cryptocurrency, Even Good Projects Can Go Bad - petethomas https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/technology/envion-initial-coin-offering.html ====== tlb I missed the part where this was ever a good project. Cryptocurrency mining has to use the cheapest available power, or else it loses money because the mining rewards float at just above the cost of the world's cheapest power. Because many companies prefer renewable power (such as data center operators who want to claim they are carbon-neutral) and there's a limited supply, renewable power will always be at a premium over the cheapest power. A big problem with successful ICOs is that the companies immediately have too many shareholders to let them pivot. The idea could probably be morphed into something that works, but not with 100s of retail shareholders demanding progress on the idea they originally backed. ~~~ Lazare > I missed the part where this was ever a good project. Agreed. > Cryptocurrency mining has to use the cheapest available power Mostly agreed. > A big problem with successful ICOs is that the companies immediately have > too many shareholders to let them pivot. An ICO doesn't give you shareholders. Some ICOs outright call the money you give them "contributions" or "donations". (Tezos, who had a very successful coin offering and then hit somewhat similar challenges as this lot was very explicit: "Any contribution made to TEZOS during the Contribution Period as described below is qualified as a non-refundable donation...") But even the ones who label the money as an investment aren't giving out anything remotely resembling ownership, control, or voting rights to the purchasers. I don't see any reason why a pivot wouldn't be possible. And, cynically, a lot of ICOs do pivot almost immediately, from "building the product they promised" to "spending the money they raised". :) > not with 100s of retail shareholders demanding progress They can "demand" all they like, but what can they do? They have no ownership, no control, and no votes. The company is apparently owned by one Matthias Woestmann; as the article notes, he doesn't even have to listen to the _founders_. He certainly doesn't need to listen to the people who participated in the ICO. ~~~ siruncledrew Agree to all of those points. The part where any "investors" essentially have no say, control, or equity in the company would certainly defy any possible reason for a sentient angel or corporate investor to make an investment. There's an abundance of red flags that people need to seriously look at. Other gems from the article: > “I know most of the I.C.O.s out there are either fraud or won’t deliver on > their promises,” he said. Envion, he believed, was different. Uhh... > Seif Shieshakly, an adviser to Envion who is based in the United Arab > Emirates, said that the I.C.O. structure had “cut out so many middlemen” and > created new investment opportunities, but that “the lack of regulations, > again because of the infancy of I.C.O.s, carries risks that regulated > environments would generally have far less of.” This one again speaks for itself. > The investors have also turned up evidence that some of the founders sold > their own tokens before the current mess spilled into the public. Wow... so I guess with a lack of regulation, insider trading is suddenly cool again. > But he said the funds added up to only $50 million at this point, not the > $100 million that the founders had claimed. Mr. Woestmann said the founders > hadn’t raised as much money as they claimed. And the declining price of > virtual currencies has dropped the value of the various digital tokens > Envion is holding. So they not only willingly defrauded investors, but also basically used the money like a bank instead of a company, and just purchased other crypto assets to trade and earn from. > Jessica Smith, a 21-year-old in England, said she had put $28,000 into > Envion — almost all of the money she had made over the last two years of > trading cryptocurrencies nearly full time. She said she was now looking for > new work. That's a very painful lesson about putting all your eggs in one basket, but one she will probably learn from. ~~~ ceejayoz > That's a very painful lesson about putting all your eggs in one basket, but > one she will probably learn from. Gamblers often don't. ------ adwhit _Envion said it would use the money collected from investors to build mobile rigs, filled with computers designed to “mine” or digitally create new Bitcoin. The rigs could be moved between sources of renewable electricity, which would power the mining computers_ Good project?? Sounds absolutely pie-in-the-sky. Another ridiculous idea that raised an insane amount of money from extremely naive investors. In other words, just another ICO. ~~~ Maybestring It would be a great idea, had only cryptocurrency been invented before powerlines. ~~~ EnFinlay Powerlines are far from lossless, so there is still an advantage to being close to the power source. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Lo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses) ~~~ Maybestring Hauling trailers around isn't lossless either. ------ lordnacho How much of this ICO story is simply rediscovering things that old finance had already found? All this talk about being able to trust the entrepreneurs, that they were building a real business in good faith, it's not exactly a new problem. The solution, before blockchain muddied the waters, was that you'd find a reputable investment bank, which would stake its reputation on your sincerity, and they'd introduce you to people who would be willing to invest. There would be a bunch of rituals to go through, like a road show, presentations, meetings. And that's not all; there was a regulatory process they would show you how to pass as well. ~~~ wpietri Definitely. So much of cryptocurrency world seems hell-bent on rediscovering why current financial regulation exists. At one point in US history, it was relatively easy to create a bank, and the banks could issue their own private currencies: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking) This provided relatively little value and quite a lot of failure, so it was taken as a "let's never do that again" lesson. The Etherium fork after the DAO theft was in my view people rediscovering the value of having a regulator. Given the regular and massive losses due to breakins, scams, and fraud, I have to wonder if this is the most efficient way to learn these lessons. ~~~ jesusthatsgreat > Etherium Is this a running joke or something? I've seen the misspelling of Ethereum several times now on hackernews and it's a tell-tale sign that the people talking about it haven't invested much time researching it or delving in to the space in any way. > Given the regular and massive losses due to breakins, scams, and fraud, I > have to wonder if this is the most efficient way to learn these lessons. Where there is money changing hands, there are scams and fraud. The difference with crypto is that you can follow / track the money at all times. It doesn't mean you can get it back, but it does increase the chances that somewhere along the line the attacker will slip up and reveal themselves once they try to buy something or exit in to fiat currency. The bottom line is that crypto exists because the banking system is perceived as broken by many. It's slow, expensive and corrupt as far as the average person on the street is concerned. ~~~ lalaland1125 "Ethereum" does not match normal English spelling rules, so native English speakers have a tendency to spell it in the "correct" way as Etherium. If anything, I would argue that "Etherium" is the more proper spelling and that we should migrate to that. ~~~ wpietri Yes, that was indeed my mistake. Thanks. ------ latchkey I've been watching this one very closely as I'm a fairly large miner. This was a scam or failure from day one. Totally over-engineered and zero experience running an actual mining operation. They put so much effort (patents!?) into those MMU shipping containers that there is no way for them to compete with all the other people who are just building a simple box and throwing miners into it. The MMU had substantial airflow design issues as well. To the point that something as simple as opening the door of the container would throw everything off balance. How about putting 90+ holes on the side for sucking dirt and bugs into the container? I could keep going on and on... The also heavily moderate their community. Anyone who speaks up with hard questions, is silenced with blocking and removal from their group. To watch it get to the point where it has is quite entertaining to the say the least. HydroMiner is a far more interesting project, run by two sisters, with actual long term experience in this industry. Nicole got ripped on the math for this article [1] which was directed at Envion, but at some level, she is pretty right. There was no way that Envion would ever pay back what they claimed they would. [1] [https://medium.com/@hydrominer/why-there-is-no-161-profit- in...](https://medium.com/@hydrominer/why-there-is-no-161-profit-in- mining-a876ebb91443) ------ wmf _The founders of the company ... set it up in Switzerland... ...problems had begun even before the project started fund-raising late last year because of the chief executive the founders brought in, Matthias Woestmann. According to Mr. Martin, the founders gave Mr. Woestmann what they thought was temporary control of their shares in the company. Mr. Woestmann later refused to give them back, and then diluted the shares of the other owners, providing him with control of the money that was raised._ This is exactly the same problem Tezos had. What's the deal with people giving up control of their money? ~~~ Lazare I read the same passage and did a double take. If you give someone ownership of your company, obviously they're not obligated to give it back. It's _their_ company now. You were dumb enough to give it away; why do you think they'd make the same mistake? Also, to the extent that this had worked, it feels like an attempt at setting up a straw transaction to hide control of the company. Why exactly did they thing they needed to "temporarily" transfer ownership of the company? ------ flashman _Jessica Smith, a 21-year-old in England, said she had put $28,000 into Envion — almost all of the money she had made over the last two years of trading cryptocurrencies nearly full time. She said she was now looking for new work._ Put it all on red! ------ latchkey From: [https://www.investor.gov/howeycoins](https://www.investor.gov/howeycoins) RED FLAG: CLAIMS OF HIGH, GUARANTEED RETURNS: Not quite 'guaranteed', but seems quite inflated... [https://www.envion.org/en/ico/](https://www.envion.org/en/ico/) RED FLAG: CLAIMS OF “SEC-COMPLIANT”: Yes, [https://www.envion.org/en/faq/](https://www.envion.org/en/faq/) "Our token is fully compliant with regulations set by the SEC and Swiss financial regulators and outside auditors from one of the Big Four auditing firms will vet every aspect of the business, including prior to the ICO." RED FLAG: INVESTING WITH A CREDIT CARD: Yes, [https://www.envion.org/en/faq/](https://www.envion.org/en/faq/) "We accept Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) cryptocurrencies and credit card payments with Visa or Mastercard." RED FLAG: PUMP AND DUMP SCAMS: Yes, look at the current price. ~~~ ksahin "The world as we know it, will change" ... It seems like a Bitconnect punchline !! Seriously, how can they treat this ICO as a "good project". You are right, the landing page is full of red flags. ~~~ latchkey People who invested with a credit card have their funds locked for up to a year! [https://www.envion.org/en/news/how-to-invest-short- instructi...](https://www.envion.org/en/news/how-to-invest-short-instruction) "Buying EVN by credit card will result your token to end up in a locking period of 4–12 months (see envion.org/faq). This locking period is a protection for our investors needed for credit card payments." ------ JohnJamesRambo >a plan to bring clean energy to the computers that manage Bitcoin. This doesn’t even make sense. Not surprising this failed and I don’t feel sorry for idiots that invested in a project that makes no sense. Bad projects must fail. ------ seibelj The JOBS act was a push towards securitized crowdfunding but it had too many strings and never took off like many hoped. ICO's are proof that there is demand for real-time trading in private companies with micro-investment, but it also has obvious issues. My hope is securitized-ICO's develop that make it easier to raise money from a global pool of investors, and the investors also have liquidity and legal rights. We need regulation that improves the situation without destroying it. ~~~ dnomad There's demand but there is no supply. No serious company is going to crowdfund away actual equity. Only the very worst companies are going to go out on the street and beg randos for capital hence ICOs. The reality is that the public will never have access to high quality deals. But there is a lot of money being left on the table that is flowing into scammy ICOs and badly managed Kickstarter projects. It's really too bad the IRS has nothing on the spectrum between private foundations and highly regulated public charities. There's a case to be made for "micro-foundations" that could be crowdfunded for a common purpose and would be barred from issuing ownership shares or taking on debt. (At dissolution time all "profits" of the charity must be disbursed to another charity.) There's a real failure of imagination here at the IRS: the internet makes it ever easier people to collaborate but it's very difficult to effectively pool capital which leads to Kickstarter and ICOs both of which are very sub-optimal solutions for everybody. ------ duxup What about this ICO made it a good product compared to others? ~~~ orthecreedence It had a _whitepaper_. ------ Rapzid My biggest takeaway from the past few weeks is that POW based distributed cryptocurrency is a bit like communism; it only works on paper. The reality is that, even with Bitcoin, the power to stave off attacks has consolidated to a few big players. The massively distributed protocol and massive power usage is a huge wast at this point. If your gonna need a few big players anyway, might as well build a trusted circle from the start and eliminate the rest of the waste. The coins that can actually be used for day-to-day transactions are vulnerable to attacks. The largest and most secure player, Bitcoin, has reached the point where transaction fees are too high and speeds to slow; nobody takes it anymore. Where does it go from here? I predict governments are gonna crack the whip and altcoins, along with ICOs, will be a footnote in history. ~~~ ojr EOS has DPOS (Delegated Proof of Stake) which is not wasteful like PoW, it is a trusted circle model, and transactions are free, and it is easier to distribute ICO-like tokens, I think it might go there from here ------ granaldo Bad projects may perceive as good Good may perceive as bad The market dont know better ------ BurningFrog Hey kids, good projects can go bad in all worlds!

How Bitcoin made right-wing conspiracy theories mainstream - schrototo https://www.salon.com/2018/06/08/how-bitcoin-made-right-wing-conspiracy-theories-mainstream/ ====== ve55 If you actually read this article in full, it seems quite inane to me. >Now you have actual Nazi groups being in favor of Bitcoin. Weev, one of the biggest Nazi leaders worldwide is into it. There's a great Twitter account that tracks Weev’s Bitcoin wallet, every transaction coming out of it, along with those of some other neo-Nazis. It doesn't seem important that someone you dislike, nazi or not, uses a currency. Many of the world's worst criminals and killers use the US dollar. It doesn't matter. >that “the world will ultimately have a single currency,” which to me is a conspiratorial belief. It doesn't have to be Bitcoin. I don't think anyone important seriously thinks Bitcoin in its current state can be a world currency. But you might be surprised what happens in the next few decades or 100 years from now as far as a world currency goes. >There is at least a hint there of “illegitimate/parasitic profit takers interfering with an otherwise-honest transaction,” which is a classic form of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. At this point I don't think this article is worth taking seriously. I'm not sure how you can read lines like this that imply rent-seeking is an "anti- semitic conspiracy theory" and continue on thinking this article is worth your time. Even if other points of the article are better than this, I still expect better content on HN ------ njarboe If this wasn't PR for a book, I'd think it was a satire of how someone on the left, who hates Bitcoin, would describe it.

Wikipedia pageviews this year for each line of ‘We Didn't Start the Fire’ - underyx https://www.tomlum.com/remember-the-fire ====== mitko I feel so surprised, didn't realize this song had such lyrics. Makes me really want to come up with a modern set of lyrics and go to a karaoke. Something like this: ~~~ Mitch McConnel, AOC, trade war, Cardi B, fake news, ICO, arnold schwarzenegger, wiki leaks, bitcoin, hacker news, facebook, North Korea, South Sudan, annexing Crimea, Game of Thrones, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Key and Peel, Buttigieg, Snoop Dog, can you "feel the Bern"? We didn't start the fire, sha-lalA-la-lAla (and so on... please someone finish the rest) ~~~ Brendinooo [https://twitter.com/we_didnt_start](https://twitter.com/we_didnt_start) was a pretty hard-working bot for this sort of thing. ~~~ pronoiac I’m bummed it didn’t match the rhythms, which isn’t impossible for a bot, see [https://twitter.com/wiki_tmnt/status/1142070265150464000?s=2...](https://twitter.com/wiki_tmnt/status/1142070265150464000?s=20) . Maybe I should make a follow up bot. ~~~ DyslexicAtheist you _should_ make one!! ------ ufo On a related topic, apparently the lyrics for "We didn't start the fire" and "It's the end of the world as we know it" by R.E.M work quite well when played together, despite being thematically contradictory: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEYc8ar2Bpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEYc8ar2Bpw) ~~~ zhte415 This is remarkably good. ~~~ ufo My favourite mashup of his is Village People's Y.M.C.A with Hans Zimmer's Inception soundtrack. It really puts the lyrics in the spotlight [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DsoCe7C4Kmk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DsoCe7C4Kmk) ~~~ benj111 Not as good as Smack my Bitch up the Orinoco Flow! I'll admit, the lyrics don't _quite_ work together in that one. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dLScpNjQbak](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dLScpNjQbak) ------ dheerajvs We're Gonna Build a Framework: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2h0cbvsw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2h0cbvsw8) ~~~ robertAngst Gave me PTSD from when I had to make a choice on a backend framework. Thank you ------ lifeisstillgood "England's got a new Queen" seems to have 1.5m views - how is that a more popular search term than "richard nixon" or "marilyn monroe"? I can only assume it's some kind of google suggested term after people type england, and then they click on it thinking it's breaking news ... But it seems a weird outlier ~~~ thih9 If you click on a term, you’ll see the page it leads to. I’m assuming they manually assigned a page per line and then counted pageviews for each page. ~~~ lifeisstillgood oh i thought it was actual search term ------ foobarbecue Woah, I had never heard of the Syringe Tide ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringe_tide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringe_tide))... which was caused by the Fresh Kills landfill??? You can't make this stuff up. ~~~ air7 > The landfill was opened in 1948 as a temporary landfill but by 1955 it > became the largest landfill in the world Indeed. ------ genmon Ha! I did the same in 2014, interesting to see how it has changed in that time [http://interconnected.org/home/2014/12/12/billy_joel](http://interconnected.org/home/2014/12/12/billy_joel) ------ brownbat Genius link here, in case anyone needs it: [https://genius.com/1136925](https://genius.com/1136925) ~~~ geofft Wikipedia's own article on the song has a brief summary of each event, too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire) ------ randycupertino Can't scroll down the page without hearing the song in my head. ------ Apocryphon "Here Comes Another Bubble" uses the same tune: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I) This song came out in 2007. ------ merpnderp I just went through and clicked on the dozen or so I didn’t recognize, and I’m much better off for doing it. This is a fun and great site. ------ uponcoffee I think log scale or some different minimum/increment (start from the min instead of zero) would make the chart more informative. 'England's got a new Queen' really skews the precieved scale as most everything else is sub 500k, with it pulling ~1500k ------ DyslexicAtheist somewhat related (sorry for going off on a tangent) .... the lyrics from the Datarock's song "True Stories" are entirely made up of Talking Heads song names. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRXGFcsrMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRXGFcsrMg) Also the lyrics of the song _" Seed (2.0)"_ from The Roots have hidden meaning[1] that kind of blew my mind (huge Roots fan here): "I interpret the song to mean that they are attempting to unite the rock and roll and hip hop genres. In this case, they are trying to plant the seed of hip hop within the womb of rock and roll. He's having to do "fertilize another against my lover's will" because hip hop is resistant to integrating other musical styles. This interpretation is supported by the lines in the first verse that go: "She don't want no rock-n-roll She want platinum or ice or gold She want a whole lotta somethin' to fold" The lines are describing the hip hop culture obsession with money and "bling." Whereas, "I lick the opposition because she don't take no birth control" signifies that rock and roll is open and willing to integrate influences from other genres. If you're still doubtful, just listen to the beats underlying the song. You have the heavy beats that are commonplace in hip hop and then the distinct guitar riff." [https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858522508/](https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858522508/) The crazy thing is that Mos Def (now Yasiin Bey) takes that idea one step further within his own lyrics by fusing every (hip-hop) song of his album "The New Danger" with a different genre showing that Hip Hop does lend itself for fusion. E.g. his song "The Rape Over" actually sounds like a song from "The Doors". The whole "The New Danger" album is full of examples like this. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srx- Wf5KrzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srx-Wf5KrzQ) ------ Overtonwindow A simple yet brilliant song ~~~ dehrmann For being based on a gimmick, I agree. The thing is you can only have one of these. Anything even vaguely similar will just a a knockoff. For a less memorable gimmick song, anyone remember Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex? What impresses me is Billy Joel's range as a musician and song writer. Piano Man, Movin' Out, We Didn't Start the Fire, and Longest Time are all popular, but so different. ~~~ dehrmann I ran across another gimmick song this year: Netflix Trip by AJR. The narrator basically relives his childhood over a Netflix binge of The Office. ------ Angostura Fascinating. Although the tiny numbers for 'vaccine' and 'birth control' make me query what's going on here ~~~ foota Those seem to be pretty specific pages on wikipedia, likely to refer specifically to what the song was. Vaccine links to the polio vaccine and birth control to the (nearly empty) wikipedia page for 'oral contraceptive pill' ~~~ ImaCake The pill link is just a portal to other links. When I used DDG to search for "the pill" it took me to one of the child links first, which has rich details on one form of the pill. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_oral_contraceptive_pi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_oral_contraceptive_pill)

Saying You Can't Compete With Free Is Saying You Can't Compete Period - ThomPete http://techdirt.com/articles/20070215/002923.shtml ====== fnid The problem with this post is that it neglects recouping non-marginal costs. If the factory costs you $100 Million to build and you sell the cars for $20,000, which is the marginal cost, how are you going to recover the $100 Million? ~~~ jsankey This is even more glaring in the flawed movie analogy. Consumers of movies are not just paying for the experience of the movie. The movie itself is the main distinguishing factor. There is no "perfect competition" across all movies as the article seems to imply by limiting the differentiating factors to things surrounding the movie itself. ------ ippisl Another problem with this post , is that it goes under the assumption that prices in a competitive market becomes the marginal cost. but price in the competitive market goes towards the marginal costs. there's still some profit margin even in competitive businesses like walmart , commodities markets, netbook markets . ~~~ kiba It is talking about digital goods, not physical goods like walmart, oil, netbook, etc. Also, from what I understand, Masnick does understand that prices in a competitive market will go toward marginal cost.

Node.js Best Practices Reloaded - gergelyke90 http://blog.risingstack.com/node-js-best-practices-part-2/ ====== filipedeschamps I didn't know about Local Modules in NPM 2.0, that's an awesome feature!

Announcing Skynet Beta - ericflo https://siasky.net/GADwbULtGj2NuBXJrQPBkivr6etO5uD4BSToixUUSCVhGw ====== smt88 We already have tech brands named iRobot and Soylent. I guess we might as well have Skynet now, too. ~~~ mtmail There's a couple of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet) products

Ask HN: Is there a news startup for collating sources? - ig1 With the Prism story there was a hugely complexity of sources. Different news services had obtained information from both government insiders and the companies. There were also lots of direct primary source like companies or employees putting out statements.<p>Because of the complexity and the fact the sources were all over the place it made it close to impossible for anyone to stay on-top of the story fully.<p>It seems like in the future this will happen more often (for example stories breaking with live reporting on twitter) so we need a better way to track primary sources.<p>Is there a startup working on this ? ====== gee_totes What do you mean by _primary sources_? Primary sources typically means the original source material[0], not articles in the Washington Post, etc., and I just want to make sure we're on the same page :) DocumentCloud[1] is a startup that helps you annotate and organize primary sources (canonical definition) [0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_sources](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_sources) [1][https://www.documentcloud.org/home](https://www.documentcloud.org/home) ~~~ ig1 Well I mean sources which are either primary (i.e. tweets, blog post which are from eye witnesses, people involved) and also secondary sources such as WashPo when WashPo acts as the sole conduit for a primary source (i.e. WashPo publishes information they got directly from a government insider).

The boom in mini stomachs, brains, breasts, kidneys and more - sergeant3 http://www.nature.com/news/the-boom-in-mini-stomachs-brains-breasts-kidneys-and-more-1.18064 ====== twic I grew a heart by mistake once. I was studying the way cells move, and to make cells that moved, we would dissect hearts out of seven-day-old chicken embryos, shread them into chunks, and put the bits down on a layer of matrigel in a dish full of tissue culture medium. After several hours, the cardiac muscle cells would start to dedifferentiate into fibroblasts (not really fibroblasts, but people call them that) and start zooming around, at which point you can do science on them. I painstakingly prepared one of these dishes, then forgot about it, and left it in the incubator for a week. When i got back to it, the initial chunk of heart muscle had completely gone, turned into fibroblasts - which had then spread out over the dish, and turned back into cardiac muscle cells. There was a thin sheet of muscle strung out across the width of the dish, and it had started beating. ~~~ Immortalin Can you grow a human one too? ~~~ twic I'm still working on the brain! ------ Techowl A few years back, Bill Gates said that he'd be working in biology if he were still a teenager [0]. There's a lot of exciting work happening in the field, and if anyone finds this sort of thing particularly inspiring, I'd encourage them to read up on bioinformatics -- there's plenty of programming work to be done in the biosciences. [0] [http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/heres-to-you- biolo...](http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/heres-to-you-biology- hackers/) ~~~ skosuri It's a pretty awesome time to be a biologist. Things are happening so quickly and profoundly. In sequencing alone, imagine having 30 years of Moore's law progress in 5 [1]; that just happened and we are still catching up to the consequences. Then there are GWAS, CRISPR, organoids, ESCs/iPSCs, superres microscopy, immunotherapy, etc. Also it is true that computational approaches will play a big role [2]. [1] [http://www.genome.gov/images/content/costpermegabase_apr2015...](http://www.genome.gov/images/content/costpermegabase_apr2015.jpg) [2] FWIW I'm hiring staff and postdoctoral positions in bioinformatics looking for folks with experience with genomics, machine learning, and/or CS. ~~~ toomuchtodo I'm not looking to get hired, but I am looking to do statistical analysis/Manhattan plot for endometriosis variant identification using a patient group, and develop a therapy using CRISPR. Would you be able to recommend anyone I could connect with? ------ smithkl42 Impressive, certainly. But I'm not quite comfortable with it. Growing a human brain seems uncommonly close to creating a crippled human being, intentionally. I don't know where the line is, but it doesn't seem good to me for society to be walking this close to it. ~~~ malandrew Without senses (sound, touch, taste, sight, smell), I would imagine that the human brain would create it's own little world. It's not like you're depriving it of senses it once had. It's not going to have knowledge of what being crippled is. It won't be aware that any of those 5 senses exist. It's almost as if a human missing most of their senses spent their entire life in a float tank. I don't think it would be humane or inhumane, merely different. Without tons of advances we wouldn't be able to relate to it, or it to us. It wouldn't even be aware we existed. In a way, its possible that the first intelligent alien life we make contact with will be one we create. As a specie, we've spend an inordinate amount of time and effort trying to make contact with intelligent life that might exist beyond our planet. Learning to make contact with artificial brains that we can hook up to different senses (artificial and mechanical or artificial and biological) is going to be awesome. It's even possible that the brain in it's own isolation from us even does something humans do naturally; it tries to explain and understand its world and may even form the notion of a god or creator that brought it into existence. Hopefully one day it will get to meet its creator that brought it into existence. It likely won't damn us or condemn us because it won't know any better that it was crippled, just as the religious among us don't damn their gods for not bestowing us with talents and abilities like omniscience and omnipotency. ~~~ flipp [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_of_despair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_of_despair) ~~~ malandrew "With the pit of despair, he placed monkeys between three months and three years old in the chamber alone, after they had bonded with their mothers, for up to ten weeks" "after they had bonded with their mothers"? That's pretty cruel and totally an apples to oranges comparison. That researcher relied on the curse of knowledge and self aware to deprive the monkeys of a pleasurable stimulus. ~~~ Houshalter Where do you get the idea that the monkeys would be even better if they never got to see their mothers at all? You are saying that suffering is ok as long as you aren't aware that not-suffering is even possible. Somewhat reminds me of Genie [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_\(feral_child\)) or Danielle [http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2008/reports/danielle/](http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2008/reports/danielle/) ~~~ malandrew To investigate the debate, Dr. Harlow created inanimate surrogate mothers for the rhesus infants from wire and wood.[10] Each infant became attached to its particular mother, recognizing its unique face and preferring it above all others. Harlow next chose to investigate if the infants had a preference for bare wire mothers or cloth covered mothers. For this experiment he presented the infants with a clothed mother and a wired mother under two conditions. In one situation, the wire mother held a bottle with food and the cloth mother held no food. In the other situation, the cloth mother held the bottle and the wire mother had nothing.[10] Overwhelmingly, the infant macaques preferred spending their time clinging to the cloth mother.[10] Even when only the wire mother could provide nourishment, the monkeys visited her only to feed. Harlow concluded that there was much more to the mother/infant relationship than milk and that this "contact comfort" was essential to the psychological development and health of infant monkeys and children. It was this research that gave strong, empirical support to Bowlby's assertions on the importance of love and mother/child interaction. Another experiment by Harry Harlow. The interesting things to observe here is that the money felt attachment to something that provided it with contact comfort. The brain in question wouldn't even know what "contact" is because it lacks a sense of touch. With that in mind (no pun intended), what we're left to speculate is where that complex mass of neurons will venture. Will it "hallucinate and invent" something that provides the equivalent of a mother figure? Alternatively, (and I think this is more probably), it's possible that the brains we invent for a long time are merely equivalent to evolutionary stages of brain development from millions of years in the past. That begs the question, would the precursors of the modern human brain be considered to be an inhumane condition to the brain we have today? It clearly had a lesser capacity in all sorts of ways. The ancient human brain cannot comprehend, yet alone fathom what the modern human brain is capable of. By the time we grow these brains to the neuronal mass capable of human levels of thought, we will probably lack the ability and knowledge still on how to make it think like us because the technology for growing it bigger is going to far outstrip our capacity to coax it to grow a certain way (assuming we even know what that way we should grow it to achieve the consciousness of the modern human). ------ fche For a moment, I thought we were talking about the videos. ~~~ bgilroy26 We are, this is where the demand for embryonic tissue comes from. ------ oxide this is jaw-droppingly awesome. In hindsight it seems almost obvious that these particular cells would form into these organoids. I suppose that's part of the beauty of science in general. ------ dekhn I feel like this was pretty obvious given that teratomas appear spontaneously. Once you appreciate that ESCs contain enough potentiality to form organs, the research kind of unfolds itself. ------ mathgenius This reminds me of deep-dreaming: here stem cells, give me some kidneyness, go for it. (And it's just as creepy as deep-dreaming.)

Ask HN: Dropbox passowrd resets this morning? - nathancahill I and more friends than normal got password reset emails from Dropbox this morning. Something related to the Dropbox hack a couple months ago maybe? ====== stsic I didn't get a password reset, but my password no longer worked, and 100% did not change it. ------ mihaipocorschi Here too.

Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system - elorant https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/09/volkswagen-audi-porsche-vw-group-plans-one-os-to-rule-them-all/ ====== spanktheuser I'm also aware of a project from a major automotive supplier to attempt the same thing. From my understanding it's unlikely to succeed because manufacturers view suppliers as commodity producers of components they find boring like brakes, steering systems, sensors, transmissions, safety systems, fuel pumps, etc. Not as anything resembling a true partner. Not to mention that it would require competitors to collaborate closely in the production of a highly complex piece of software. That said, how many times have we seen this story in other industries? 1 Legacy corporation is warned that an integrated, consumer-friendly software architecture for [multi-billion product line] is needed, and failure to produce one creates an opportunity for an insurgent competitor and/or commodification by adjacent supply chain players. 2 Leadership laughs and ignores mounting evidence of just such a threat emerging for up to a decade. 3 Lo and behold, prophesied competitor finally emerges and finds immediate market success. 4 Legacy company announces that they'll bring a competing solution to market, promising investors that they'll produce a similar quality OS, but across 39 models, uniting 457 separate component suppliers AND the entire post-purchase product support infrastructure. They're starting today and promise to launch in 12 months. 5 Legacy company lights billion dollar bonfire to distract investors while CTO frantically tries to source a robust embedded operating system with consumer- grade interfaces and feature set. 6 Best case, no one who has such an OS will license it. Worst case, Google will. 7 Leadership jumps ship, legacy company craters or slowly slides into irrelevance, and CEO later gives interviews about how absolutely no one could have seen this coming, with a sidebar complaining about software engineering salaries. Honestly, this whole narrative is becoming a bit boring at this point. VW is at stage 5. The fact that its leadership consists entirely of charlatans is self-evident. ~~~ magduf >That said, how many times have we seen this story in other industries? This is a great post, but it could really use a list of actual examples from other industries. ~~~ iforgotpassword Not other industry, but Nokia. And Blackberry. IBM is an example where the quick panic solution (original IBM PC) surprisingly was quite successful for a while but also bit them in the ass in the end (modularity and exclusive use of off the shelf parts). ~~~ pjmlp PCs would have looked much different had Compaq not been so lucky with their reverse engineering attempt, hence that whole failed PS/2 MCA recovery attempt. ~~~ magduf The MCA bus fiasco was hilarious. Basically, IBM decided it wanted to retake control of the PC and get everyone to abandon the clones, so they came up with the PS/2 and its proprietary MCA bus, and they really thought everyone would suddenly abandon the clones and their open architecture and buy proprietary IBM PS/2 machines that were incompatible with everything. They didn't seem to understand at all that now the cat was out of the bag, they couldn't put it back in. It'd be interesting to see an interview of the idiot executives that hatched up that doomed scheme. ------ PorterDuff It's just my own ignorance speaking (probably), but I can't say that I like the idea of Android getting near/intertwined with mission critical systems. Hopefully 'infotainment' implies something that is well clear of 'stopping' and the like...although I'd just as soon that they dropped the 'tainment' part and simply provided an interface for diagnostics, HVAC, &tc. What bugs me the most about the 'tainment' part is that not only do I find most of it irritating, but that you are binding technology that obsoletes quickly with an expensive product that should last 10-20 years. It's a shame that car companies have picked this as an area for product differentiation. ~~~ alexis_fr The same was probably said 15 years ago about the computerization of the car engine and their rapid deprecation. Did the average lifespan of a car decrease since then? How ridiculous is it to drive a 4WD into the desert, full of electronics that can’t be repaired and where a single chip can cost 300$ and has to be shipped from mainland America... So yep, with car computerization they reduced the lifespan from 30 to 12 years, and with infotainment they’ll reduce it to 8 years. Same length as a Tesla warranty. ~~~ jobu There has to be a balance. Electronic fuel injection (EFI) is _far_ more reliable and adaptable than even the best carburetors. Electronic safety systems may have reduced some of the longevity of a vehicle, but the alternative is higher chance of injury or death. ~~~ PorterDuff I think that the EFI argument is something of a red herring, no one is suggesting a return to the Quadrajet. OTOH, EFI can be done as a modular (and replaceable) product rather than as part of monolithic whole-vehicle design, but that last bit of goodness or regulatory need is likely not met. I just think of it all as being Peak ICE. The last generation of piston engines is going to be crazy complex and probably deserve to be usurped by it's battery-powered successors. ~~~ photojosh > The last generation of piston engines is going to be crazy complex and > probably deserve to be usurped by it's battery-powered successors. My car-loving boss just got a hybrid RAV4, and he absolutely loves it; combines the best features of both with (presumably) the only downside of lower maintenance (but even then there's less wear-and-tear on the ICE side). I suspect we will see quite a slow, gradual transition through hybrids to battery-only. Of course, this is Australia (and I'd imagine similar in the US and Canada) where it's more common to drive long distances. ------ castratikron >some models simply won't run if the infotainment system is broken; the navigation GPS provides the vehicle's master time counter, and without that, the powertrain won't function :O ~~~ dognotdog Balkanization is about right. In my experience developing driver assistance systems, there are enormous efforts spent on political turf wars instead of proper design and engineering. This is not surprising, as the team structures, at least as of a few years ago, were traditionally set up with tradtional manufactirng in mind, around parts and control modules, while the functionality exploded (within 1 or 2 generation of cars) and crossed those boundaries without adequate processes in place properly architect the interactions from a bird's-eye view, creating major computing power, network bandwidth, and most importantly to OEMs, cost bottlenecks. And as cost is king, nobody wants to budge on increasing cost on their own module, and critical architectural decisions aren't made as much as put off until there isn't any other choice left except to hacking in the most critical bits with one eye closed and hoping somebody else's jenga tower falls first. That, I imagine, is how you get that GPS time thing, I can see how it all started: "Oh, I can save $.30 on my module if I don't put in an RTC, that'll get me a nice bonus for cost saving, GPS is going to have one anyway ..." ~~~ castratikron I've worked in that environment before. It doesn't help when upper management has no software or hardware background whatsoever (e.g. MBA or "sales" or whatever) and in that case the only way they see things is in terms of dollars. One time I was working on a new project and I wanted to put an SD card on the board so that we could have a log. I was asked how much the log was "worth" so that they could justify the cost of the extra hardware. ~~~ cameronbrown > One time I was working on a new project and I wanted to put an SD card on > the board so that we could have a log. I was asked how much the log was > "worth" so that they could justify the cost of the extra hardware. Very much like testing. Incalculable if you need it (and you certainly do), but managers who don't understand, just assume that you're doing something wrong if you need to "waste time" reading logs or writing tests rather than adding features. ------ chicob _" But you also have to open up all the car's sensor data [to Google], and when I say all, it really is all sensor data"_ This is revealing. I'm glad my tractor GPS/guiding system does not run Android. ~~~ Zhenya Android and Google services are 2 different things. 1 is an opensource OS, the other is proprietary services. ~~~ incanus77 Want to run Google Maps on this system? You must use Google services as a whole. Don’t want to? Look up the numbers on how many global providers of maps data there are... ~~~ magduf Not only that, the other providers are extremely deficient compared to Google Maps, from an end-user perspective. My 4-year-old car came with an infotainment system using HERE maps. It's laughably bad compared to Google Maps, and here's why: 1) The HERE maps aren't auto-updated. You have to go to some trouble to download updates twice a year, and then install them on the car with a USB stick. You only get 3 updates for free, and after that you have to pay a huge price for each update. Google Maps is updated constantly with new roads, construction outages, even when a street is going to be blocked for a parade. 2) The business data on the built-in system is sparse. With Google Maps, pretty much any brick-and-mortar business that exists is on there. And I can easily see the business's operating hours too, and it'll warn me if I'm going to get there too close to closing time. 3) Searching is far easier. Finding a destination on the built-in system is like something from the 90s, and you generally need to start with a state, city, etc. With Google Maps, you just start typing a name and it pops up suggestions, which usually gets you the place you want very quickly. 4) No traffic updates on the built-in system. It has no way to get traffic data; Google Maps has this by default unless you're in a "dead zone". I could go on and on. ~~~ blub You've discovered how nearly infinite ad dollars and leveraging a near monopoly in mobile has allowed Google to destroy competition. ~~~ magduf What competition? There was never anything on that level before Google Maps came around. It's not like Mapquest ever offered similar functionality. Google didn't invent GPS mapping, but they did seem to invent combining it with a bunch of really useful other information like business addresses, hours, reviews, photos, easy searching, etc. And that doesn't even include stuff that isn't useful in cars, like walking/biking directions, public transit directions/hours/etc. Would we have gotten all this without a near monopoly like Google? The only thing I've seen that comes close is Apple Maps, and that too is backed by a gigantic company with its tentacles in many things. Some company that only does maps isn't going to have access to all that data, so you'll just get a program that makes pretty maps that's only useful if you know the GPS coordinates for something, which of course no one does. ~~~ blub The competition which couldn't improve their products as fast or as well because they did not get free money from their ad business and now had to compete with gratis good quality maps to boot. For a long time after Google Maps entered the market there were better products available from various providers. ~~~ magduf Were they really better though? Maybe by certain metrics, but maybe not by other metrics. If someone shows me a GPS navigation app that's really pretty, fast, and even shows me where speed traps are, that's nice and all, but what if it doesn't let me just type in a business name, and instead I have to actually know a street address? Then it isn't very useful to me. I'll go back to the app that lets me navigate to business names instead, because that'll save me a lot of time by not having to use a separate app just to look up a street address for every destination I want to go to. This reminds me a bit about the debate between Google Maps and Waze (yeah, I know they're owned by the same company). The Wazers love waze because it's cartoonish and easy and shows speed traps. That's great, but to me it's too simplistic, it doesn't show alternate routes in real-time (GM will show me a gray route, saying "similar ETA", "3 minutes slower", etc. as I drive), and it's absolutely useless for public transit, so I stick with GM. And this is with two free products both owned by Google. Finally, what "better products" are you talking about? I remember quite well when GM came out. I switched almost immediately from MapQuest. This was back when it was a PC-only (web) application, of course. At the time, MQ had a clunky interface, and then GM suddenly came out using AJAX, and I could click and drag the map around! It was utterly amazing compared to MQ that you had to use pan and zoom buttons for. Maybe the map dataset was better for MQ? I'm not sure about that, but let's just say for argument's sake that MQ had better map data. That's fine, except that there's more to using a map application than the dataset: the user interface is extremely important too. So this seems like a good example of ignoring how important the UI is, and then wondering why so many people suddenly abandon the "superior" product for the one with the easier-to-use UI, which is something we've seen over and over and over in tech over the decades. ~~~ blub I was using iGO offline maps for navigation on Windows Mobile where one could search for addresses and also POIs. Sygic was a similar app later available on the Sony P1i. Both of these were offline apps using maps from multiple sources, at a time when Google were still gathering data and mobile online access was expensive and inconvenient. At least when using iGO the iPhone and Android didn't exist yet. ------ Etheryte The key takeaway for me here is that they want to build an Android-based OS that will run both user applications and, say, your traction control on the same stack. Given the very mixed history of Android security, updates, and more, I simply can't see how this would end well. ~~~ vgoh1 The article must be misleading. Android would never have the latency or reliability to run things like traction control and fuel management. The engineers at auto companies are well aware of this, but perhaps the author of the article is not. ~~~ Onanymous Engineers might well be aware but not the managers who make decisions ~~~ jacquesm Contrary to popular belief most managers in industry are not 100% clueless. No manager in a car company would be so incompetent that they would off-load time critical functions to a phone. My money would be on incompetence of the writer long before I'd suspect the people on the other side of the interview. I've been through a couple of those myself, it is always very interesting to see how your words come out once they've been interpreted by someone who is essentially clueless but well-meaning and trying to understand something that goes above their normal day-to-day level of complexity. And that's the good case, the one where they don't have an agenda to push. ~~~ oblio On top of that, there's also this funny thing aspect: [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murray_Gell- Mann#Quotes_about_...](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murray_Gell- Mann#Quotes_about_Gell-Mann) > Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the > newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, > physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist > has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, > the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing > cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s > full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the > multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or > international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the > newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was > about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. ~~~ magduf Well, you do know that the newspaper isn't written by a single person, but by a large team, so I guess the hope is that the journalists who wrote articles about far-off Palestine were more competent than the journalist trying to write an article about physics. ~~~ JetSpiegel That "effect" is just Michael Chricton co-opting a Nobel laureate to one of his rants. It has nothing to do with Gell-Mann, the physicist. ------ NohatCoder I get a little bit worried when I read that they want one platform for everything, the security needs of different systems are too different. I'd say a modern car needs at least 3 separate systems: A low level system for all critical features, this should be coded as safely as possible and run on a slow almost unbreakable computer. A selfdriving features module, doing all the computations that are too intensive for the low level system. The low level system must be able to detect malfunctions in this system and act accordingly. An infotainment system, just assume that it has been hacked when designing the other systems. It should be simple to prove that this system cannot take over the rest of the car. ------ LeonM I think this is a result of automotive technical progress slowing down. And I don't mean that in a bad way. For the past 100 years, we have been developing better and better cars, with both breakthroughs and incremental improvements in the drivetrain, safety, comfort, reliability, etc. Now though, cars are consolidating. Most car companies only have a handful of 'platforms' on which they build various models. For example: Volvo currently only produces 3 models of combustion engines. We have reached a point where numerous subsystems are just 'good enough' and require little more R&D. During the past 20 years or so, the software had to keep up with all the new tech coming out in the automotive world. Now that development of automotive hardware is slowing down, it is time to focus on the software for the long run. Tesla has been doing this for a while now. Their electric drivetrain is at point where there is more for them to gain in software than improvement of the hardware. For other car manufactures it is a bit harder to accept that, as they have been developing hardware technology for a long time. Edit: fixed my wrong example about Volvo, thanks to C1sc0cat ~~~ C1sc0cat Volvo appear to have 3 main engines and multiple versions of the same engine. And I suspect that some ICE engines in use are still variants of pre war designs the Chevy Small Block v8 is a little newer starting mid 1950's ~~~ tyingq _" suspect that some ICE engines in use are still variants of pre war designs the Chevy Small Block v8 is a little newer starting mid 1950's"_ Perhaps, but I'm not sure how relevant that is. The only pieces that remain somewhat as they were would be the block, crank, and rods. Overhead cams, variable valve timing, aluminum heads/blocks, electronic ignition, fuel injection, ECU, etc...are all newish. If some other design (rotary engines, for example) were better and made economic sense, they would have likely won out. ~~~ C1sc0cat Just variants though the British Leyland O series dated back to well before ww2 and lasted into the 80's if not the 90's ~~~ tyingq Which, as mentioned, was retrofitted with overhead cams, fuel injection, etc, decades after the WWII era. ~~~ C1sc0cat We are talking about the British car industry here, BL is what the the company that made the Mini couldn't work out what profit they where making on the dam thing. ------ stefanoco My two cents: \- I'm asking myself why there's no reference to Autosar ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUTOSAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUTOSAR)) which is not an operating system (whatever this means in this context), but yelds a sort of a standard architecture in the car and among third parties. It's a real mess, but it works in this sense. \- rumors exist about VW and other manufacturers pushing for using ADA (more specifically Spark), anyone aware of this? ~~~ molteanu Yes, it is a mess. At over 15.000 pages, AUTOSAR specifies not general utilities, libraries, battle tested data structures used in the automotive field or whatnot, but actual automotive components that in theory can be developed independently and combined to build the whole car. XML being the medium of choice for this standardization doesn't help either. You're left with tools upon tools that modify XML files and generate C code based on those files and very little opportunity to actually look/modify those C files by hand, even in trivial circumstances. In short, the AUTOSAR idea, from what I've experienced, is to hire an army of mouse-clickers that can use shiny tools to assemble and configure every aspect of the car. They would not learn C or any programming, but learn the actual standard and know what you need to click or check in each and every instance. The tools would then take care of bringing in the code and generate the header configuration files for you. Anyway, not mentioning AUTOSAR might be a sign that its days are numbered, perhaps? ~~~ jacobush Then, from my experience, when the mouse-clickers are done, you employ an army of C-coders to work around and/or abuse the (expensive) AUTOSAR components until the system (somewhat) does what you wanted it to. In my case it was AUTOSAR in name only. Our higher bosses thought we were running AUTOSAR, but the lower you went, the understanding was firmer and firmer that what we actually ran was custom software. Oh, the days numbered part - nah, I don't think so. AUTOSAR is for very low level stuff, I think unholy combinations will live on for a long time. AFAIK all the component (like hardware, Bosch for instance) vendors only provide AUTOSAR components for integration. Not sure, it was a few years ago I was in the loop. ------ lispm It's 5000-10000 people for the car software, connecticity, cockpit, autonomous driving, energy, mobility services, etc. Many of them already work in the Volkswagen Group, but will be centralized working on common platforms. ------ ravedave5 I wonder if this is fallout from Tesla. They must have a huge advantage in a way here having a clean sheet architecture only a decade old. Between this and superbottle I think the idea to use suppliers as little as possible may pay off. ~~~ Shivetya Own a Tesla Model 3. Over the air updates is vastly under estimated by many people. It is just as much of a revolution in the automobile industry as the electric drive train. As more cars move to electric and electrified drive trains the value of over the air updates that Tesla employs will become more evident. it frees you from being forced to buy a new car to get new and or improved features. plus building a system like that allows Tesla to add new hardware to their cars with ease as the mindset is in place already. A model S bought five years ago enjoys most if not all the updates a newly purchased model S has today. that is not something any other maker can claim and I doubt that any even want to go there because not only does it free the consumer from having purchase a whole new car for exciting features but obligates the maker to providing updates to an existing car. ------ krn An Android-based infotainment system developed in collaboration with Google has already been announced and demonstrated in 2020 Polestar 2 EV, Volvo's alternative to Tesla Model 3, which might have inspired this "Volkswagen's bold plan"[1]. I have nothing against it, if the update policy would be similar to Android One's. Otherwise, it can easily become a security nightmare. Imagine, if your 5-year-old Audi car was as secure as your 5-year- old Samsung Galaxy smartphone. [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjeNoPJ25Jc&t=5m28s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjeNoPJ25Jc&t=5m28s) ------ breakingcups Iteresting. On the user-facing side I hope the choice for Android will mean GPL compliance and a way to sideload apps. Can't wait for a LineageOS variant for cars. My experience with user-facing Volkswagen software has been terrible so far, so I hope a new mandate might improve that area drastically. As far as the underlying new operating system Volkswagen is developing for all their cars, seems like a smart move as long as the design by committee syndrome is somewhat curtailed. ~~~ ashleyn Lineage for cars won't happen, too many questions surrounding roadworthiness/safety/security. ~~~ yjftsjthsd-h It's not like it's controlling anything critical, just the entertainment system that already ran Android. ~~~ yk An entertainment system suddenly blinking is safety critical. ------ davidthewatson I fail to see how an operating system causes 2 or 3 decades of divergent software engineering to coalesce. That's only probable if numerous components descend from the operating system group in an architectural style that is unified, congruent, and global. That's way beyond the bounds of what we traditionally call operating systems. You are more likely to wind up with a cargo cult. ------ Neil44 A big driver not mentioned is differentiation in the market, now that the trend is for platform sharing across manufacturers. Essentially the same car being sold by several different manufacturers with the only differences being the badge on the back and things like the infotainment system fitted. By carving out a big ecosystem early they’re getting a head start in that area. ~~~ dwyerm We're changing to auto market into the cell phone market? Oh no. "Well, I get Free Miles(tm) with the Chevrolet, but it throttles at 70MPH and the radio only plays Pandoa. Or I can get the exact same car from Crysler, with no throttling, but the miles come in bundles of 1000 and radio apps are $5/month." ------ skc And by new they really mean Linux, right? ~~~ codeulike Yep and the source code will be a printout in the trunk. ~~~ tonyedgecombe I was quite surprised when my new oven came with a sheet of paper listing all the open source software. ------ AcerbicZero I can see what VW is trying to do here, and honestly out of the various rental cars I've driven over the past 6 months, my Golf R's Android Auto/Car Play integration has probably been one of the best. VW also has a history of people doing minor modifications of their cars electronics, both via the intended menus and for more complicated things, via the outstandingly named vagcom (VCDS)* I think this is the direction more automakers should go. I drove a friends Tesla the other day, and it shares some the same features, allowing you to make fairly specific customizations of certain things through the built in menu. *Some items which can be customized via the VCDS - DRL's, Windows Auto-Up/Auto-Down/etc, and a bunch of other things I can't remember anymore. ------ ElijahLynn With all the car operating systems (OS) that will no doubt be connected to the internet AND abandoned in the coming years. We need a car OS that is fully open source so companies can offer security updates after they are abandoned, so they don't get hacked and taken over as a full autonomous bot army of cars. ------ tt Once an OEM opens up its vehicle data and control to Android (and/or Google Automotive), it's game over for them. The OEM becomes a commodity hardware maker. Plenty of analogy with mobile phones manufacturers. The OEM will not make a dime after the sale of the vehicle while Google will build and strengthen a development platform to enable third-party applications and services and profit from them (something Google knows how to do really well). Think Turo/Getaround, cleaning, refueling, charging, insurance, package delivery, in-car applications, etc. One way out of this is for the major OEMs to band together and create their own standardized platform that works across OEMs. At minimum, that platform should expose a single standard interface to all third-party service providers. ~~~ nexuist >One way out of this is for the major OEMs to band together and create their own standardized platform that works across OEMs. At minimum, that platform should expose a single standard interface to all third-party service providers. This already exists, and it's why there's a slew of Bluetooth-enabled apps on the app stores that let you self-diagnose your own car. It's called OBD-II and it's federally mandated on every vehicle since 1996 in the US and since 2003 in the EU: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On- board_diagnostics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics) ~~~ magduf OBD-II isn't actually a real standard. The OEMs all tack on additional stuff to it, so none of the implementations are fully compatible with each other. Ford and Mazda, for instance, use a medium-speed CAN bus that other OEMs don't, so most OBD-II readers can't access anything on that bus. Also, the whole point of OBD was supposed to be standardizing diagnostic messages so anyone could read the trouble codes. However, all the OEMs have lots of proprietary codes that aren't in the standard. The whole thing is a mess. Finally, OBD-II isn't a standard bus anyway. It's an interface to the end user or technician. The various modules on the car are interconnected with a variety of buses: CAN (high-speed or low-speed or medium-speed), LIN, MOST, etc. ------ tonyedgecombe In some ways I wish they abandoned infotainment systems completely and just relied iOS/Android to provide those services. Stick a dumb screen in the car with USB/Bluetooth connectivity to my phone. ------ close04 As (not) discussed previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973385) ------ stefanoco A bit out of context but worth mentioning: anyone here having knowledge of the trend regarding using ADA/Spark in the automotive industry? ------ papermachete How long until car modifications are outlawed and reserved for overpriced proprietary mechanics shops? ~~~ rootusrootus We were already going in that direction, but perhaps EVs will push us over the edge. Tesla has certainly made it damn near impossible to work on their cars. ------ teddyh Of all the possibilities, shouldn’t VW be the _least_ trustworthy actor to make software for cars? EDIT: I am, of course, referring to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal) ~~~ carapace Yeah, my _first_ thought was, "Will it lie to me about my car's emissions?" ------ hwj I wonder what language this new OS will be writtin in. C? ------ hkai I'd prefer a car without an operating system. ~~~ sangnoir You can probably get one with no software/microchips, but it won't be new. ------ growlist My cynical side tells me that if Germany weren't one of the world's largest car exporters, the EU would already be legislating to harmonise these systems globally. ------ amelius > Senger also revealed that VW Group will be using Android for future versions > of the MIB infotainment platform Yikes, can't they find an OS that isn't laden with adtech? ~~~ whalesalad Can you think of a better platform? What's the alternative? ~~~ amelius Pure OS, [https://pureos.net/](https://pureos.net/) And if that's not sufficiently capable perhaps VW can invest into making it so. ~~~ Zhenya VW is looking for a strong 3rd app support; I doubt pure OS is in the same ballpark as Android for ready-to-install applications from large developers like spotify, tomtom, etc etc ------ qaq 10,000 people that sounds like an overkill ~~~ yitchelle This sounds like an underestimation to me. An ECU in car can consume up a team of 200 to 250 engineering resource. This only for those working directly on the ECUs. Add to it the secondary functions, the numbers will explode. ~~~ virtualritz I worked on the infotainment part of recently released top brand car's software. The number of engineers on that was flabbergasting. Way higher than your number. But the reason was not that it was needed. The reasons were: \- The approach to developing software (pure waterfall, with lots of agile BS bingo terms as seasoning). As someone else mentioned: Old car companies do not understand software. I may add: At all. \- Upper management throwing more resources at missed deadlines (that were moving all the time anyway). Every seasoned developer knows that more developers will slow you down. Nine women can't have a baby in one month. \- Trying to understand the issues with the project getting pear shaped by looking at burn down charts. Once I was on a way to one of these meetings in an elevator and someone said: "Gentlemen, are you also on going to our weekly 'Men who stare at graphs' ritual?" Most senior engineering folks agreed that the work hundreds of developers, dozens of engineering managers, PMs, POs, agile coaches and god-knows-what- other-fancy-title people were doing could be done by a team of around 25. I completely agree and as such parent is right. 5k-10k people is complete overkill. But then -- given how these companies work -- it is not. It is indeed an underestimation and the very reason this will go nowhere. A few cars will be released with this OS and then it will be replaced by something much better that someone else, not an old car company, was doing in the meantime. ~~~ yitchelle I have also worked in the infotainment space, now in powertrain space. It seems that the infotainment teams seems to be 2x to 3x the size of a typical automotive engineering team. Sometimes, I feel that infotainment products are more subjective than the other car functions. eg, Does that "ding" sound notification reflect the values of our brand vs Can the maximum power be transferred to the rear wheels in the snow within 300ms, subject questions vs objective questions. Subjective questions needs more study and analysis, leading to more engineers. ------ test2016 Exciting but slow ------ Phenomenit I think everyone is scrambling to not get Netflixed. Software is key! ~~~ yk But in this analogy, VW is the mouse waiting in a dark alley for the upstart.

ISA Super VGA Card Project - peter_d_sherman http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/isa-supervga ====== gaspoweredcat Nice. I always feel so old when i mention ISA cards and no one remembers them. like pretty much everyone in that era i had a soundblaster 16 and my first network card, a 10Base T card that used good old Co-Ax, T Pieces and Terminators. Those were the days!

We Owe It All to the Hippies (1995) - daddy_drank http://members.aye.net/~hippie/hippie/special_.htm ====== justanother If there's one thing I enjoy from music (and music videos) from the 1980s, it is the unbounded optimism and bubbly nature. We were going to change the world, "with _science_!" And I often think of the early-to-mid 1990s Internet as a hangover of this mentality. We laughed off the Clinton Administration's Clipper chip, even as rumors abounded of the NSA peering at every NAP. We were, after all, unstoppable. We were going to change the world with science. I don't want to sound too negative, because it's never too late for a comeback, but for the moment at least, this thing has been turned against us by corporate interests and the NSA. Were I a pessimist, I'd quote Easy Rider and say, "You know, man, we blew it." That is, if I were a pessimist. I'm still pretty sure we can put this thing together like it was supposed to be. ~~~ mwfunk Looking back at media from that time, there was what looks like a quaint optimism now. But from what I remember from living in the '80s, there was also a darkness that is just not really a thing anymore. I graduated from high school in 1989, so this is biased by the fact that I was a kid or a teenager throughout the '80s, so I'm not sure to what degree this was just me. But I remember just taking the inevitability of nuclear war almost as a given. It felt like for my whole life the world was trapped in a Mexican standoff, and the inevitable result was the annihilation of all life on the planet. It's still a possibility, of course, but I just remembered spending a lot of time in the '80s thinking it was inevitable. When I remember the goofy '80s stuff, it was always in stark contrast to the apocalyptic stuff. The goofiness and bubbliness of '80s media felt like a reaction to the darkness of the reality. I don't know how much of that undertone of darkness was a shared sentiment vs. my own bias because I was a moody dramatic teenager at the time. The '80s were also the heyday of the global disaster movies, that were about the extinction of the human race. I just remember a steady stream of movies about human extinction from nuclear war, disease, climate change, comets, zombies (of course), aliens, apes, etc. People still make apocalyptic movies, of course, but it just felt like fear of extinction was more in the collective subconscious then than it is now. Or maybe that was just the kind of kid that I was? I'd be interested to hear how others experienced the same years. ~~~ Cowicide >I remember just taking the inevitability of nuclear war almost as a given. It was damn closer than most people realize. That nutball Reagan nearly killed all of us: [http://www.alternet.org/story/149821/how_reagan_brought_the_...](http://www.alternet.org/story/149821/how_reagan_brought_the_world_to_the_brink_of_nuclear_destruction) And, we're not out of the woods yet. If we end up with another madman Republican perhaps like McCain, we'll probably get sent over the edge with Russia since we already know that Putin is also a nut. Not to mention Russia was perhaps (arguably) on its way to launching nukes on a false alarm if it wasn't for one guy who didn't follow orders: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#The_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#The_incident) Maybe if he hadn't disobeyed orders someone else would've stopped the launch, maybe not. But, considering the incredible stakes, I think it was all just a bit too close for comfort either way. Moral of the story? Live every day like it's your last day on Earth, because someday it'll be true. ~~~ acheron It's funny how people who kept warning that Reagan was going to start a nuclear war have never gotten over being completely wrong. They really seem disappointed that it never happened. ~~~ existencebox I think we can excuse humanity from wanting to "learn from our mistakes" so to say, but to keep in mind that nuclear war isn't really a mistake we'd have much option to learn from post-factum. If there's any chance we were close to the brink (and Reagan or not, we were), we need to do as much as we can to focus on what brought us there and how; but unfortunately, this is in contrast to the main learning mechanism for many humans, where without the _actual_ disaster, there will be as much "well clearly there was nothing to fear" ignorance as there is "the sky is falling", and which is more dangerous is in my opinion debatable. ~~~ Cowicide Agreed. It reminds me of people that say the TSA's security theatre has kept us all safe because there hasn't been another major attack on the scale of 911 again. ------ arh68 > _Just as personal computers transformed the '80s, this latest generation > knows that the Net is going to transform the '90s. With the same ethic that > has guided previous generations, today's users are leading the way with > tools created initially as "freeware" or "shareware," available to anyone > who wants them._ So, did that generation die? I think it died back with Justin Frankel and Shawn Fanning. 'Writing shareware' hasn't really been an acceptable job description since about then. And if that wave from '95 died, what wave are we in now? EDIT: PS I just remembered Bram Cohen's name so I'm trying to rethink the generations.. ~~~ pjc50 Everything's been professionalised as there are far more people able to write software and far more competition. "Shareware" has been replaced with IAPs, "free to play", and advertising-supported software. Everything is now always connected; there's no advantage to distributing software by mailing out floppy disks and persuading people to hand those disks to others. ------ theoh See also [http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3773600...](http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3773600.html) ------ return0 It's weird how the children of those hippies are in a frantic pursuit to turn those ideas back into silo'ed, patented and monetized startups, while still claiming to be open. There lurks a deep incompatibility between the two, but still so far the system is working. Money seems to be one of the things the hippie revolution did not change, and while there is brand new technology for money, we 'll never see a "couchsurfing for money". In the end, here we are talking about it in the forums of a private startup incubator... ------ rdl Gen X had a lot more to do with the useful parts of the Internet, along with pre-Baby Boomer scientists, than the boomers (and thus hippies). ~~~ dredmorbius Hard to say, it's been a lot of development all the way through. Without the work of Ritchie and Thompson and Joy, et al, all Boomers, Unix wouldn't have developed as it had. Dennis Ritche was born in 1941. Richard Stallman (1953) brought about GNU and the Free Software revolution, Larry Wall (1954) Perl. The Internet (and Arpanet before it) were both built by Boomers. Linus Torvalds (1969, Gen X), Linux, Brian Behlendorf (1973, Gen X) Apache. Those two were probably responsible for more of the Linux revolution than anyone else. Google was created by Gen Xers (Page and Brin, 1973). Yes, they were creating new and useful stuff, but on a base created mostly by Boomers. ~~~ rdl Ah -- I forgot most of the people in the early Arpanet/Internet in the 70s were grad students or otherwise fairly early-career, so they were Boomers, vs. mid/late career at the time, so Greatest or Silent Generation. ~~~ dredmorbius Some older ones may have been in academic positions. I suspect they'd mostly have been with IBM or the big corporate computer companies (Burroughs, Sperry- Rand, Honeywell, etc.). Unix and Internet were pretty non-commercial at the time. ------ normloman So hippies wrestled technology away from centralized control (mainframes), started their own businesses, and slowly rebuilt centralized control (the cloud). You know what I hate about hippes? How self congratulatory they are. ------ jonjacky See also the same author's (Stewart Brand) Rolling Stone article about SAIL, Xerox Parc, and ARPA -- written during the hippie era, in 1972! [http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html](http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html) It has been discussed previously in HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5548719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5548719) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1697569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1697569) ------ Animats Nah. The people who really made it happen weren't hippies. ------ p4bl0 I think I already said it on HN, but I really, really recommend reading "DO IT!: Scenarios of the Revolution" by Jerry Rubin. In my opinion, you can't get the right version of the history of hackers without considering the relationships between the hackers/phreakers movement and the Yippies / Freedom of Speech / Hippies movements. ------ blueskin_ >communalism and libertarian politics Aren't these two things completely mutually exclusive? (NB: Obviously, being able to _choose_ communalism or individualism as you prefer makes the two semi-compatible, but not the aforementioned as a public policy...) ~~~ vidarh Libertarian socialists would often argue that you can't have a genuinely right wing libertarianism. The starting point for libertarianism is to maximise individual freedom and minimise restrictions on that freedom. The big white elephant in the room for right wing libertarians is that they want a _huge_ carve out from that: Private property rights are pretty much holy for them. While for left wing libertarians, private property right is often seen as a central contribution to restrictions on individual freedom. This goes all the way back to Proudhons famous "property is theft". My personal favourite example is the property right carve-out that is most extensive in the Nordic countries: the Freedom to Roam. To me, who grew up in Norway, it seems ludicrous that property owners should be able to prevent me from walking in a forest. Allowing them to restrict that would be an immense limitation of personal freedom, and the ability to restrict it would not confer any additional freedoms to speak of for those few property owners. Yet in most places in the world property owners can impose such rights. In Norway they can't (this is mostly true with various exceptions in the different Nordic countries; and to a much lesser extent in the UK and a few other places), though this isn't a result of some modern socialist ideal - the freedom to roam is so ingrained in Nordic culture that the right predates written laws (in Norway it was first codified relatively recently, as it was considered so obvious that it didn't seem to need to be made explicit previously). Left wing libertarian ideologies tends to take this principle much further: Except for cases where property rights confers a clear increase in individual freedoms, it is suspect. Thus most left-wing libertarian ideologies would allow personal property, including possibly limited land ownership, but would tend to see extensive land ownership, or ownership of extensive capital resources, as threat to the freedom of others. ~~~ JoeAltmaier Thank you, that makes clear why Libertarianism is so impractical and essentially doomed. Property rights are central to the functioning of a modern society. Extreme views would cripple a nations economic and social growth. Any country that adopted draconian property views would be marginalized in the world community. ~~~ vidarh > Any country that adopted draconian property views would be marginalized in > the world community. Almost every country in the world has adopted "draconian property views", so clearly that is not true. A small subset have substantially less draconian property views (the Nordic countries freedom to roam as I mentioned), and are seeing no economic hardship that can be traced to not being as enthusiastic about harsh property rights. ~~~ JoeAltmaier Misinterpret draconian: no property laws, or absolute sanctity of property would be Libertarian extremes. They can't work as well as something in between. ------ eevilspock No. hippie != libertarian hippie != hipster ~~~ ardit33 hippie == live and let live, fuck the man, and peace love and harmony, oh, and lots of drugs and sex, music and drum circles. Sounds like fun, until you hit real adulthood and real responsibilities. ~~~ coldtea > _Sounds like fun, until you hit real adulthood and real responsibilities._ The whole idea is that it isn't something just for 20-year olds. So the "sounds like fun, until you hit real adulthood and real responsibilities" part is a total misunderstanding of the thing. What did hippie-ism in is mostly human relations and psychology (feuds, jealoushy, power plays, etc) than people reaching some imaginary "real adulthood" that prevents it, and the fact that for a lot of people it was a temporary fad. There have been very active hippies well into their forties and even seventies, and of course there have been older people, and people who spent their whole lives, in lots of similar "outsider" movements who didn't give up.

And suddenly, you're hip - Phra http://blogs.perl.org/users/su-shee/2011/01/and-suddenly-youre-hip.html ====== msy Thing is, while both Ruby & Vim have been driven by what she's describing she neatly sidestepped why those movements got started in the first place. Ruby gained huge traction primarily via Rails because working on PHP is unenjoyable to many and Ruby is a really pleasant language to work with. Vim's recent resurgence can largely be traced to development of Textmate grinding to a complete halt. Textmate's rise a few years ago was due to BBEdit failing to evolve. Git beats seven shades of shit out of SVN. Erlang provides a proven answer to concurrency issues. Javascript is the only choice for the ever more important front-end side of web development. Each of these shifts of development momentum have rational, logical underpinnings. The buzz, the screen casts and other errata are a consequence of a lot of people making the same logical, reasoned choice and talking about it in public. I cannot think of anything that's changed in Perl that'd justify any such interest. I admit that may be my ignorance. Making sexy screencasts might get a little traffic but you can't astroturf wave of developer momentum with them. ~~~ Su-Shee Sure, there are plenty of reasons of the whys and whens - on the other hand, we could easily ask "why didn't everyone choose Emacs when textmate's development came to a halt" or "Why didn't people choose Python as their web language of choice when they didn't like PHP" or "Why not Bazaar instead of SVN" or why Ryan Dahl chose JavaScript as a base language for Node.js and not any of Python, Ruby, Perl, Scheme, Lisp or Lua - but JavaScript - and so on. (As others already pointed out below so I'm summing this up in one sentence here..) Thankfully we have plenty of options to choose from nowadays. And yet I'm still convinced that the choice of Git over Bazaar has something to do with the smoothness of Github and with "It's from Linus!", the choice of Ruby/RoR with the image 37signals so nicely projects, that JavaScript's recent rise and massive change in perception comes thanks to Douglas Crockford and Erlang would have probably stayed in its niche if it wasn't for CouchDB. So I was surprised and amazed by the change in perception of Vim over the last year and therefore I blogged about it. And yes, along your examples Perl faced a similar situation around 2000 (so thanks for the well chosen examples) and decided to do Perl 6 to re-ignite the Perl spark. (Let's set aside for a moment wether or not it worked and what happened after that and boy am I sure the second I hit the submit button people will _exactly_ totally get into this subject.. ;) I also didn't ask wether or not one really wants the success of the masses or if it might be a good thing to stay in a well-defined niche with a community of your choice, creating your own culture - as for example shows the Linux distribution Slackware very happily year by year and to a great satisfaction of its users. I also didn't mention how much it might have to do with the age of developers, wether some changes plainly might be a generation thing of "first generation web developers" and "second generation web developers" or how much Apple's regained success does play into all that. But as we can see within the comments below, old Perl cliches aren't really dead and get repeated all over wether or not the subject was Perl's marketing and not Perl's qualities (or the perceived lack thereof...) Or maybe we all get kicked our asses by Lisp next year - thanks to Peter Seibel's Practical Lisp Programming book or "Land of Lisp" and of course Paul Graham and Emacs wins all over. ;) ~~~ seanalltogether Predictably Irrational talks about what you are describing here. You see, despite many of these technologies having a smaller install base, what they have done is create a new anchor in technology, which allows them to monopolize the conversation. The iPhone and Rails are the most significant anchors within the past 5 years. You can't make Perl popular by acting like rock stars and making videos on youtube, you can only making Perl popular by creating a new technological anchor for others to hook themselves to. ~~~ alnewkirk I agree with this whole-heartedly. My sentiments exactly. ------ po I used to be a huge Perl advocate; I loooved perlmonks back in the day. (Just tried to log back into it after probably over 10 years but the forgot password link doesn't work) I read the Camel book cover-to-cover and giggled at the footnotes. While I loved the language, I can't imagine going back to it. Now perl programs look like cat typing to me. It was way too expressive. The TIMTOWDI mentality meant that I could never read code I didn't write myself, and even some that I did. It was terse and dense like poetry and hard to understand - like poetry. To really "know" the language meant knowing a huge surface area full of exceptions and special conditions. Sure, you could limit yourself to certain best-practices and styles but it was like being handing the keys to the porsche and told to only drive 35. At every turn, the language was begging you to flex that newly acquired knowledge of special syntax. The obfuscation contests, the perl poetry, the quines… Many languages have this failing in my opinion and it certainly matters more when you're working in a large team (hence, rigid boring old Java) but Perl taught me what it was like to go too far down that path. It is what I would call a write-only language. ~~~ sigzero You are describing a Perl mentality that really doesn't exist today and is only really touted by people that used Perl "back in the day". The community mindset has changed a lot in the last couple of years. Now, that community is trying to show that change to the world...and slowly...it is working. ------ cturner where btw is A NICE HIP FEMALE PHRASE I COULD PRINT ON A SHIRT? I'm a vim ballerina! "we" are literally invisible to the bigger public, not matter how much CPAN grows and no matter how much #perl is the biggest IRC channel on freenode. Secret societies are cool. ~~~ rbxbx I don't see why females can't be ninjas and rockstars, or are these things just not as appealing to the "fairer sex"? ~~~ michaelchisari I thought this part of the essay was strange, because they sure as hell can be. Courtney Love, Brody Dalle, Joan Jett. Not to mention: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunoichi> ------ Samuel_Michon From the article: _"The iPhone isn't the highest sold smartphone"_ Sure it is. At least in the U.S., Japan, New Zealand and Australia. In most other countries, Nokia is the most popular smartphone _vendor_ , but because they offer hundreds of different models, I doubt Nokia has one specific model that sells better than the iPhone 4. [U.S.] [http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/01/canalys-iphone-becomes- mo...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/01/canalys-iphone-becomes-most-popular- smartphone-in-the-us-andro/) [Australia] [http://www.idc.com/about/viewpressrelease.jsp?containerId=pr...](http://www.idc.com/about/viewpressrelease.jsp?containerId=prAU22603210&sectionId=null&elementId=null&pageType=SYNOPSIS) [New Zealand] [http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/telecommunications/andro...](http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/telecommunications/android- knocking-on-iphones-door) [Japan] [http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-23/apple-iphone- cap...](http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-23/apple-iphone- captures-72-of-japan-smartphone-market-update3-.html) ------ megamark16 I learned vim over emacs because vi is installed on every linux machine I have ever touched, so when I sit down to a server and I need to edit a config file, I try vim, then I use vi, and I always find one or the other. I just opened Terminal on my Ubuntu 10.10 machine and typed "emacs" and it informed me that it wasn't installed, but was available in a slew of packages. ~~~ astrofinch I never understood this rationale for learning vim. Do you really spend a lot of your development time on random Unix boxes you and all of your friends lack root access to? ~~~ wladimir These days, probably not that much, with the advent of virtualisation. But a decade ago there were a lot of shared shell servers in use with only a minimal install and a small per-user quota. So the rationale made sense... ------ pyre A suggestion for a Perl screencast: using the Perl debugger. ~1.5 years ago my friend found a bug in the Perl debugger that had rendered it basically non- functional for several releases. I think it's telling that no one picked up on that for so long (i.e. no one is using the Perl debugger, probably because they don't know it exists and/or how to use it). [ IIRC, it might be the bug under: <http://perldoc.perl.org/perl5100delta.html> ; search for 'PERLIO_DEBUG' ] ------ alnewkirk I guess I'll throw my hat in the ring. Perl is awesome, and since I've been using it practically my entire career and have contributed quite a substantial amount of time developing libraries for CPAN I suppose it my core-competency. Bottom line, CPAN is awesome ... but lets not be a one trick pony. When you hear things over-and-over you should probably take notice (and maybe even onus). "Perl is not newbie friendly, past or present (modern)", "Perl community is not friendly (rtfm)", "Perl is not used for the new web", "Perl has no good IDE", etc. I'd like to see Perl restored to its former glory because it is an incredibly versatile language. IMHO, I think Perl developers need to develop more purty public-facing tools, e.g. Websites, Web Apps, Desktop Apps, etc. .. see Lacuna Expanse for example. CPAN Modules are not public-facing (or are to a point) and do nothing towards altering the perception of Perl. ------ va_coder Why Ruby? is a pretty damn good presentation. He talks about how the benefits include the culture, as well as the language. <http://ontwik.com/ruby/david-hansson-why-ruby/> ~~~ edu I came to comment just the same. I used to work with Perl for about 4+ years, and now I'm on my way to exit a PHP work after 2 years. My next project will be in Ruby and this presentation helped me to rationalize the guts I had for Ruby (I've been playing a little bit with it). The idea of making tools that are joyful to use to the programmers (wether it's the programming language, the editor, the SCM...) is something that appeals a lot to me, and it's something that (unfortunately) Perl lacks, basically due to it's syntax. The community around the languages also affects, both have a great community around with hundreds of incredibly smart people with it's own quirkinesses, but the Ruby quirkinesses are more appealing to me (think DHH or _why) than Perl's (think Larry Wall or all the JAPH/golf...). ~~~ Su-Shee This is bascially what I was talking about. Though the Ruby community managed somehow to drive off _why and someone like Zed Shaw if I remember correctly. If that really appeals to you... ~~~ danieldon if I remember correctly You don't. _why left open source for unknown reasons. ~~~ pharrington Don't really wanna go down here, but _why left after someone claimed to post his IRL name/info ~~~ danieldon That's certainly one leading theory, and probably the most likely. However, that happened earlier in the summer, a month or more before he actually shut everything down. There are other possible theories, eg, in his last tweets he lamented about feeling left behind by the progress of open source, or the theory that he planned it all along based on the Poignant Guide's ending. No matter which of those reasons it was, it's pretty baseless to claim that he took down all of his websites, comics and open source software in a variety of languages including one he created due to some mysterious, unmentioned, irreconcilable beef the Ruby community, especially considering he was one of the most influentual people in defining that community. ------ flatline 'I've always wondered how those mechanism of "being THE it-language" or "the tool the cool kids use these days" or "success" in terms of "spreading everywhere" really works.' Just having CPAN isn't enough. There need to be new and interesting projects that stand on their own and are current and relevant. I'm not saying there aren't, I just don't read about them on HN, reddit, etc. Perl was always about making things easy, and it wasn't hard to see how a perl script was better than a cgi handler in C. How is writing a DSL interpreter in Perl cool compared to, say, Ruby? How do the Perl MVC frameworks make things easier/better than rails or django? ~~~ Su-Shee That's totally not the point with all our languages these days - Ruby, Python, Perl - next year JavaScript will probably have a similar ecosystem of modules as we do as productive as the community writes code. Who doesn't have some amazing web framework these days?! The differences boil down to details, architecture, stability, speed, security, documentation and the like - but seriously, do you really think some route handler in _programming language_ X or Y does make _any_ difference? I personally didn't like the philosophy of RoR - I liked Merb better and got really put off by its community (and still am) and specifically by blog postings selling me shit as gold and all this "awesome <insert some simple basic not even well crafted solution to an every day problem here>" selling - but this is a matter of _taste_ and _personal preferences_ and don't really count as an argument. Of course you can write a damn DSL in Perl in any way you like - otherwise a project like Moose wouldn't even be possible which wrote an entire metaobject OO system in Perl. My point was that people usally plainly don't _know_ about those things and blindly think that PHP is the only language you can do "Web" with, Ruby the only language to write a DSL in and Python the only language well I have no idea what Python might be the only language for. ;) ------ lwhi Marketing re-energised the web after the period of downtime after the dot-com crash (O'Reilly and Web 2.0), I'm sure it could similarly re-energise Perl. EDIT: If Web 2.0 wasn't a well crafted marketing campaign I don't know what is. ~~~ julius_geezer Now your edit is a phrase that would make a great tee shirt! ------ varjag Also, Ruby is a better language than Perl. No amount of campaigning will change that. (Before anyone follows-up with the usual "the right tool for the job", it's not the point here. There are good screwdrivers and bad screwdrivers). ~~~ lsc in terms of stability? really? I hear this a lot about Python. And I know a little bit about Python; I know less about ruby. But the thing of it is, from a SysAdmin perspective, Python is where Perl was in 2000. In 2000, you had differing versions of perl that were close enough to step on oneanother, but still so incompatible that you had to maintain one version of perl for your base OS tools, and usually another version of perl for every major application you used. Perl has stabilized to the point where this is no longer a problem. I can run nearly everything on system perl without worrying about it. Python, on the other hand, I've had to wrangle with many RHEL systems that have two versions of python (one, because the RHEL base system requires a staggeringly ancient version of python, and then the other for the application the server was running.) Python just isn't "done" in the way perl is. In five or ten years, sure. But for now, it's still a pain in the ass. Hell, I'd bet money that at this point, perl5 has fewer memory leaks and other programming errors in the compiler than Ruby does, just because people have been pounding on it for so long. ~~~ mfukar I'm going to draw an analogy from Larry Wall's own words: Python 3 is to Python 2 what Perl 6 is to Perl 5, a different language. Just because you had a bad experience with Python legacy code (yes, RHEL sucks), doesn't mean you get to discredit the language. What is it about the _language_ you find unfinished? I'd be 99% certain any issue you're going to mention is actively being worked on. ~~~ berntb Interesting... Are people using Python 3, now? (Hint: I don't think the grandfather comment was about Python 3.) And different languages doesn't say much. :-) Perl 6, compared to e.g. Python 2/3, is a _really_ ambitious undertaking. But OK, with the backporting going on, Perl 5 might end up being similar to Perl 6... :-) ~~~ skybrian I'm sure some are, but it's not mainstream. For example, the Django team hasn't started porting to Python 3 yet. For now, you can ignore Python 3. ------ pwpwp Nice article, although I'd fear a "Project for a New Perl Century". If there were an International Criminal Court for Programmer Rights, Perl should be the first language tried for crimes against programmerdom. ~~~ sigzero Any "crimes" were the fault of the programmer and not the language. Period. End of story. ------ mfukar I don't get it; when the Perl folk thought they had to reach the masses, instead of making Perl 5 more accessible to newbies, instead of covering Perl events (a comment on the blog mentions some specialized hardware for doing so - lol), instead of actively pushing Perl projects, they decided to come up with Perl 6! Yet Perl 6, except from some blog posts describing its utter dominance over Perl 5 performance, still hasn't seen the coverage/promotion it deserves (I'm assuming here, because I'm not using it). Maybe there are some lessons to be learned here. ~~~ chromatic _I don't get it_ To start: there exist Perl programmers who have worked on both Perl 5 and Perl 6, specifically to make Perl 5 more accessible and to make Perl 6 more imminent. Don't assume the entire Perl community is a hivemind with a single shared purpose. ~~~ mfukar I don't; and that wasn't my point. ~~~ chromatic To whom does the pronoun "they" refer, if not "the Perl folk"? ~~~ mfukar I started replying, but I'm not going to engage in a discussion of syntax and semantics. Feel free to downvote me. ------ pacemkr I'm just getting into Ruby and converting to vim as my primary editor, and I didn't even know that this is a "hip" thing to do. All of a sudden I feel trashy for making logical choices. I think the author misjudged why people like me choose Ruby and vim -- choices that have nothing to do with each other, btw. I'm a fan of terseness and readability. Ruby has a reputation for both. I've never heard the following phrases spoken: "Perl is great for writing DSL's." "Perl is very readable." The most amazing experience has been going on GitHub on day one, reading the Rails, Haml, Sinatra, Tilt, you name it, code and being able to understand virtually any part of it. This is not only a testament to the language, but also a testament to the quality of the frameworks and the API's that are being produced with it. Show me a web framework written in Perl that I can dig into and understand with zero Perl experience. Vim, on the other hand, is a sour-sweet topic. Here is the only reason I'm using vim: everything else sucks ___. Vim also sucks ____ because in 2011 it is still a text editor that can't copy paste using the "normal people" shortcuts. I'm looking forward to the day I finally customize vim enough to match Notepad in usability. As much as vim usability sucks, I know that I can spend a year customizing it (and it will take a year) and be able to rely on it for the rest of my life. In contrast, there is no such incentive to invest into the monstrosities riding over the JVM (not calling names). Also, screencasts are great because I read all day and its tiring, physically tiring. Sitting back, relaxing my eyes and being educated while I sip on a coffee and have a cookie is my idea of fun. Screencasts are free, bite sized, training. By the author's logic Khan Academy is worthless as an educational tool because most of it is written somewhere. ~~~ nickknw Regarding vim and "normal people" shortcuts, if 'source mswin.vim' doesn't work for you, here are the mappings I have in my .vimrc to give it the normal CTRL-C, CTRL-X, and CTRL-V, as well as sharing the clipboard with windows: " share clipboard set clipboard=unnamed " CTRL-V is Paste in insert mode imap <C-V> "+gpa " CTRL-C is Copy, CTRL-X is Cut, in visual mode vmap <C-C> "+y vmap <C-x> "+d " Use CTRL-Q to do what CTRL-V used to do noremap <C-Q> <C-V> ~~~ pacemkr Thank you for sharing that. I've never heard of source mswin.vim. The standard copy paste shortcuts are platform agnostic at this point, hell, even my phone uses them (webOS). This is where I've found vim and emacs incredibly frustrating out of the box. ------ JonnieCache Communication skills correlate with social standing. News at 11. :) ~~~ lwhi Sure, maybe the idea is obvious - I suppose the interesting question is 'how can a transformation occur?', which is something the article tries to address. ------ pmikal Hip or un-hip, ChargeSmart loves perl - developers looking for work at a San Francisco based funded payments start-up should email me their details, pmikal [at] ChargeSmart.com. ------ bootload _"... Err, yeah well of course Vim is a really nice programming editor, man - why do you think we use it?! ..."_ traditionally because if you are on a machine with limited memory vi, vim is the only editor that will load and there is no way you will get me using 'ed' again ~ <http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch13s02.html#id2963445> ------ xsltuser2010 Maybe you should market Perl as uncool and weird and without annoying yuppies like DHH. ;P ------ rgbrgb This article kind of made me want to get better at Vim.

The Strange Theory of Coronavirus from Space - tapper https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-strange-theory-of-coronavirus-from-space ====== giardini FTFA: _" I would say, though, that the coronavirus-from-space theory is still more plausible than some other theories of COVID-19. "_ IMO less plausible than that it flew out of a Chinese lab!

Ask HN: How to Make Money from Open Source Mobile App? - aswinmohanme I&#x27;m currently working on a mobile app to be released to both the app store and play store. I am thinking about making it open source, cause OSS Rocks!<p>But some extra bucks wouldn&#x27;t hurt, so how do I make some (coffee money) while making the App Open Source?<p>It&#x27;s a feed reader, so not the next billion dollar idea ====== Hamatti Just sell it in the App/Play store. (Unless something restricts that in store policies,) you can still provide an open source license and the code in Github while charging money in the stores. I'm willing to bet most people will rather pay small fee to have it installed from store and have automated updates than compiling it from the sources and running it themselves. People who want to fiddle with the code or get the app for free can use the code and compile it themselves and people who value ease of use, can just one- click buy it. ~~~ zerr What would be the license to prevent other devs cloning it (and putting/selling on app stores themselves)? ~~~ tobylane I don't think any such thing exists because then what does the community benefit from. A no-clone licence is pretty much a 'You can look and build for yourself and make PRs for me' deal. ~~~ zerr "and use". Why not... And this has implicitly happened/happening to many open source projects - people are downloading (or "buying disks") from the original author anyway. e.g. back then, I doubt anyone would buy an Emacs distribution from other person than RMS - so why not have a license which would enforce such usage - this is just an alignment to fact. ------ atonse I'm a former iOS developer and even I don't care enough to save a couple dollars by compiling my own app, when I could get auto updates from the app store. I don't suspect it'll hurt your sales with customers too much in that sense because they aren't making this choice. I'd think more about other developers taking your code, slightly theming it differently, and selling it in the app store for a dollar less than you. If you're ok with that, then go ahead. And no license in the world will help simply because you actually have to mount a legal challenge, and who's going to pay for that? I'd say a better strategy to scratch your OSS itch is to make the underlying libraries OSS, but not the UI, that way you have some kind of value proposition you're offering. ------ rococode In my opinion, it's fine to just include your monetizing code in your repo. You can use config files or environment variables or something to hide private details. As long as the ads you publish are fairly standard, I don't think anyone would mind - and it also leaves people who really don't like the ads the option to compile an ad-free version. If you really wanted to curry favor, you could even post a separate ad-free .apk release on your repo and just push a version with ads to official app stores. ~~~ hooksfordays This is what I currently do with my app. The code is open source, it's free for anybody to build and install, the build steps are simply clone and build with Android Studio. I upload the debug .apk as a GitHub release with no valid keys (so no ads), but there are ads at the bottom of the screen on the play store version. It makes a little change every month and I've not had any complaints about the ads, except to offer a pay-to-remove option, which I mostly just haven't gotten around to yet. ------ fairpx From what I've seen work, most of the OSS projects make money off of 'convenience'. This can be split up in many different tactical things, from consulting to charging for hosting, support, etc. ------ cimmanom Ad supported or consulting services related to it. You can also dual license it - for instance, put a public facing GPL version on Github and a private proprietary fork with proprietary extensions (such as advertising embeds) that you put on the App Store.

Triangle Startup Factory Goes Big – Graduates Spring 2012 Class - startupfactory http://triangletechtalk.com/1/2012/06/triangle-startup-factory-graduates-spring-2012-class/ ====== rickcecil As a co-founder to one of the companies (ruzuku) that went through the Triangle Startup Factory, I can't recommend the program enough. Chris and Dave are amazing. They have lots of experience working with startups and they are well connected to the local and national startup scene. They connected us with a couple of amazing mentors that saw some of the potential that Abe and I had missed and helped us realize that fairly quickly. We've now got a new business model and are kicking ass and taking names. :) And even though the program has ended, our mentors are still involved. Pitch Day was great. They spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks really helping us refine our pitch -- ended up with a couple of solid pitches. One more of a story meant to generate excitement and another rooted more in the market and financials -- all the details that an investor would be looking for. Not sure how many people showed up, but there had to have been 200 or more people -- at least, that's what it felt like up on the stage giving our pitch. We're now busy following up with potential investors and executing our new business plan. Crazy, hectic times. And we get to squat at the American Tobacco Campus in the TSF digs at least until the new class arrives. Their application for the Fall class is tomorrow. You don't have to be located in the Triangle to get in -- at least one of the companies (Berst) was from Chicago and I know several of us had people living and working from other places in the country. Happy to answer any questions about the program for those considering applying. Also willing to give any advice on how to get in. ------ anilchawla As a founder of one of the companies in this first batch of Triangle Startup Factory, I would highly recommend the program to startups across the country. This is a startup accelerator grounded in core lean principles, and it provides exactly the level of resources (including significant funding and a great mentor base) critical for an early stage company. Durham (North Carolina) is not just an incredible area to live from a quality of life standpoint, but it also a true center of entrepreneurial activity. Startup Stampede, Smoffice, ExitEvent, LaunchBox Digital (back in 2010), and Triangle Startup Factory (TSF) are just a few examples of the entrepreneurial sparks flying in this place. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about TSF. I am happy to help! ~~~ mindcrime Anil, what's up? Hope everything is going well for you guys! ------ mindcrime We (Fogbeam Labs)[1] didn't get in last time, but we'll be applying again this fall. One thing that I like about TSF is that they do actually give you some feedback on _why_ they didn't pick a given applicant. In our case, the two reasons they cited were "market too small," and "lack of expertise in this domain (by TSF)". Unfortunately, there isn't anything we can do about them feeling they don't have sufficient expertise in enterprise knowledge management and collaboration software, but the market size thing was obviously just a communication breakdown on our part, since the market for this stuff is farking huge. This time, our application will focus a lot more on the current market opportunity, and hopefully we'll be accepted. And ultimately we're not even limiting ourselves to _just_ "knowledge management and collaboration." That's just where we're starting. The goal is to provide quality Open Source solutions up and down the stack, that A. don't suck (like most enterprise software), B. have excellent UX, C. are well integrated (with each other and with external systems), and D. use cutting edge technology to address the highest-value customer problems. Once we ship our first couple of products, and get that initial toe-hold / purchase point and are able to start accelerating, we are going to shake things up in the enterprise. [1]: Fogbeam Labs, the up-and-coming Open Source collaboration / knowledge- management company. <http://www.fogbeam.com> Go there now and sign up for our newsletter. It's not necessary for you to spend the rest of your day thinking about how cool Fogbeam Labs are, and how much you want to email all your friends and tell them about us too. But if you can remember a time when you were really excited about a company like Fogbeam Labs, then think back to those feelings and how that made you feel, and do the right thing. ~~~ rickcecil One of the things we learned a lot about at TSF was a beach-head market. It's the first market you take on to get traction (however you're measuring traction). So, I'd suggest talking about "knowledge management and collaboration" as your beach-head and WHY you've selected that as your beach- head...and, possibly most importantly, why traction within this beach-head will allow you to tackle some of the other markets you have on your radar more easily. Also talk briefly about the potential market size of your other target markets. You don't have to have all the answers for your other markets -- after all, they are not your target market, yet -- but you should show some knowledge about those markets and be able to talk convincingly about how your product solves a real problem in those markets. As for market expertise: I think it comes down to two things. How long have you been working in that industry and how many contacts do you have so that you're not jumping in cold. If you don't have either of these, it's going to be a big red flag. I'm guessing you have had some way of validating the problem, so I am going to focus on the network problem. Find an adviser that works in the industry that is well-connected and can tell others that your solution is heads-and-shoulders above what's out there now and is solving problems in new ways that add 10x more value than current solutions. I use 10x as you're going to have problems convincing people to switch unless you are able to provide a ton of value. Anyway, just my $.02. The other thing you'll learn about, if you get into TSF or any accelerator: mentor whiplash. You're gonna get a ton of advice and most of it conflicting. So take these suggestions for what they're worth: one person's feedback based on your 5 paragraph post. ;) ~~~ mindcrime _One of the things we learned a lot about at TSF was a beach-head market. It's the first market you take on to get traction (however you're measuring traction). So, I'd suggest talking about "knowledge management and collaboration" as your beach-head and WHY you've selected that as your beach- head...and, possibly most importantly, why traction within this beach-head will allow you to tackle some of the other markets you have on your radar more easily._ Yeah, that's text-book "Crossing the Chasm" stuff. We'll need to narrow down the "beach head" to something more precise than "the market for companies that need km and collaboration," of course. And we have some research we've already done in that regard. Depending on how things shake out, there's a chance we'll focus on finance related firms first, even though my initial penciled-in list of possible target markets did _not_ include finance... due mainly to the idea that finance is highly insular, very regulated, and has a ton of domain specific vocabulary, and none of us have specific experience in the field. But, as things have worked out, we've talked to several finance related firms, and my $dayjob as a consultant actually has me in Chicago now working for a finance firm. And I'm making new connections here, in this industry, so it's looking more and more realistic. That said, I'm still thinking that "old school" industries like manufacturing, distribution, logistics, retail, etc. might be better for us. But that's the kind of stuff we're still working on settling. ------ wolffnc3 Durham, NC and the Triangle in general are fast becoming a great startup hub. It's definitely a great place to live and the proximity to the universities provides a large talent pool for startup founders to draw from. <http://www.downtowndurhamstartups.com/> ------ hiattp I can't speak from experience at other accelerators but the connections we made and mentoring we received was incredible; our TSF advisors are still engaged every week. And the significant funding lets you do the market testing you really need to prep for a data-driven go-to-market strategy. ------ deepakINdc great accelerator. smart guys.. connected and one on one mentorship. And you get almost 2.5x the cash compared to others. gotta love being able to survive on stuff other than ramen.

Newly identified computer virus, used for spying, is 20 times size of Stuxnet - heyitsnick http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/newly-identified-computer-virus-used-for-spying-is-20-times-size-of-stuxnet/2012/05/28/gJQAWa3VxU_story.html?hpid=z3 ====== ColinWright For other discussions and stories, see here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4038051> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4038200> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4033224> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4033225> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4033242> <\- Comments <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4033315> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4033481> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4033541> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4034879> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4035300> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4035485> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4035641> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4035833> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4036025> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4038014> <\- "Fix" found

Ask HN: I'd appreciate advice on my current work situation - mb_72 I&#x27;m the sole developer for a product that has been selling as a desktop version for a couple of decades, with me &#x27;on board&#x27; for around 15 years. During my time as the helm, I&#x27;ve implemented a number of improvements to the architecture of the software (including a rewrite enabling development of Mac and web versions, based on the original PC-only version).<p>My agreements with my business partner are based on royalties (20% of all sales and renewals). He works in an office and deals with customer support, I work remotely. He covers all business costs. Our agreements included payment for development work, however then I have needed to pay these pay with reductions in royalties -&gt; I was given an interest free loan for my own salary, and eventually he&#x27;s out of pocket nothing for development costs. Total income for our royalties agreements across time equate to 2 x yearly average salaries in my home country, but spread across the last 6 years.<p>Now he&#x27;s discussed selling the business. If sold, I would receive royalties for the balance of our agreement, using the average sales for the last year.I made a mistake in that I agreed to the 20% royalty rate without negotiation initially, I know that much. I have worked many hundreds of hours under these agreements, and he agrees sales have not been as we would like - but of course, with 80% of the income, it&#x27;s still (roughly for him) 3 -&gt; 3.5 an average salary per year.<p>I wish to renegotiate our agreements to include a clause that gives me part of the sale value of the company as a cash payout, the reasoning here being that my work has increased substantially the value of the company. At say a valuation of 20 x the average salary, I was thinking of 10% i.e. two years of an average salary. I feel that my value to the company is larger than what is being recognised currently, given my contributions (i.e. every single line of code in the company&#x27;s products have been written by me).<p>Am I being unreasonable here? ====== matt_morgan You're not being unreasonable but that's not the issue. The issue is the leverage you have now. Your value to your partner ends with the sale. You are valuable to the new owner as the sole person who understands how the product works. Even if they only want the idea and the customers, recoding it will cost something and be cheaper/easier/faster with your participation, plus they'll need someone to support the current product for a while, or they'll shed those customers. Convince your partner that the buyers will need you, and will only get you if you're happy with the terms of the sale. If you can enlist the buyers in this campaign, so much the better. ~~~ ChuckMcM 100% agree with this, and add the following caveat. Don't be surprised if your partner "switches gears" and tries to convince _you_ that you are being unreasonable and selfish and screwing up the possible deal (or future deal) with these "demands." Sometimes people present as friends only because it doesn't cost them to do so, but change their presentation when being asked to reduce the amount of money they may have been counting on receiving. Be ready for that to happen and understand that your actions are not "ruining a friendship" they are merely illuminating that the friendship was an illusion to begin with. ------ jonahbenton You can't really get good advice from strangers on the internet, you really need to talk to a lawyer and dig into the details, and even finding the right lawyer can be a very hard problem, so try to ask around to other technologists in your area and see if there are contract lawyers they have been happy to work with. (edit: And to be clear, a good lawyer is 10% the written details in the contract and laws and regs and 90% understanding the relationship dynamics and your interests, being able to suggest a range of written structures and terms that capture tradeoffs, and being able to negotiate effectively. Ideally, a counselor.) Some meta thoughts- * there are all kinds of contracts and all kinds of relationships. Reasonable is in the eyes of the beholders, and depends on what they value (the business vs the person, etc). I have heard of much better (for the developer) terms, and much worse, than yours. * from business perspective, the question ultimately is one of leverage. The question isn't how much you _have_ contributed to the business- if your partner thinks that way then they value the relationship with _you_ over the value to the business, and the terms you work out are dependent on how you value the relationship with them. * a business is acquired for the _future_ value it will bring to new owners. The question there is how much is your _future_ contributions are worth to the business. If you are not needed or are easily replaceable and the product is turn key, then your value is zero. If your contributions are needed, then your value is very high and you should try to structure the future relationship accordingly. Again, these are meta-thoughts only, the most important task is to try to find a good lawyer who is in your area and is familiar with these kinds of situations. Good luck. ~~~ x0x0 As jonahbenton said, this isn't a matter of value or right/wrong, it's a matter of leverage. How hard would it be to replace you? You will probably have a pressure point that you can exploit with respect to the sale. ie you can refuse to work for potential new owners. Even if you are pretty replaceable, I think most potential buyers would be scared off by having to replace the sole software engineer who understands the codebase. eg the small software business sales I'm aware of typically come with commitments around the engineering staff. Be aware that doing this may burn your relationship with the current owner. As in all negotiations, make sure that you are actually willing to live with any options you bring up. Your rights here are so fact dependent that you must get legal counsel in your jurisdiction. One smart way to approach this negotiation would be to write a contract agreeing to a minimum work period for the potential new owners; as a cost, you would need some percent of the sale price. Again, you must get yourself a local attorney experienced in these types of negotiations. One point I would bring up though, is that engineers often _wildly_ overestimate how easy it is to turn lines of code into cash. It is quite possible that the business end of this business holds all the leverage. When OP says eg he or she has "worked many hundreds of hours", this sounds like low maintenance software that the business owner can continue to sell for quite a long while without any ongoing engineering. ~~~ mb_72 > How hard would it be to replace you? It wouldn't be easy, I don't believe, and I'm generally quite negative about my own development abilities and values. One point I couldn't fit into my original post is that I do have what I believe to be a good relationship with my business partner, but I feel he's disconnected from what valuable and capable developers make outside of his business. Also, he may well not be able to sell the business at all, and in that case he's suggested I could take over as manager (for higher pay), however I would be living with the potential sale hanging over my head, and not knowing whether this better-paid role would ever eventuate. > this sounds like low maintenance software that the business owner can > continue to sell for quite a long while without any ongoing engineering. That's probably a fair statement, although there are normally updates we put out a few times a year due to changing business parameters in our market, and once every year we do a major release with new features. ~~~ x0x0 Also, serious question -- why don't you offer to buy the owner out? ~~~ mb_72 Simply - I can't afford it! :) ------ ptero Talking to a lawyer as others advised may be a good idea, but I recommend talking to the owner first. Once you bring the lawyer in the conversation becomes a competitive zero sum game and that switch is generally irreversible. The reason I would explore a friendly conversation first (and on agreement bring in a lawyer to write this up and sign) is that the amount you want is pretty small and, as the sole technical expert, you leverage is high. New owners will likely want to ensure technical support post-sale and you might have more weight than you think, even to a point of making or breaking the sale. Thus the interest of the current owner in keeping you on board may be WAY more important than whatever paper you signed 15 years ago. If you really are the only person who knows how the product works under the hood you might get your 10% from the current owner _and_ a retention agreement from the new owner. Personally, I would probe gently with the current owner before bringing your own lawyer in. Just my 2c. ~~~ mywittyname Do you think he should consult with a lawyer before approaching the owner? I agree with your statement that bringing in a lawyer at this point is going to sour the entire negotiation. But I also think it might be important for the OP to understand what his options are before coming to the table. ~~~ bsaul I've been on the other side : someone trying to renegociate a deal with me after having had (bad) legal counseling. It completely changes the tone of the conversation, no matter what. A lawyer will gives you a list of all the things that could go wrong, and all the bad behavior your partner could have (because that's what he's used to seeing). This _will_ have an impact on what you're going to tell the other person, and could really cripple the quality of the relationship. I believe talking to a lawyer should be done before signing anything after an oral agreement was found (just as a precaution), or if no agreement can be reached. Note: obviously my advice only applies if you already know the general best practices of an industry. If you feel like you know absolutely nothing, then ask people around you that had similar deals, people in the industry, etc, and _maybe_ a lawyer, if he's really specialized in the IT business. ~~~ ChrisMarshallNY I completely agree. Lawyers have a naturally adversarial mindset. It's what they are paid for. The really good ones don't trust _anyone_ ; including close family. In my work, I quickly learned to keep lawyers out of the loop until the last reasonable moment, because they not only injected a lot of cynicism and negativity into the situation; they often would fire off an email that CC'd a C-suite person, instructing me to do things the way they said; thus escalating the thing from the start. That said, they are absolutely required for these types of things, especially if there are lawyers on the other side of the table. ~~~ ethbro I think most people think of lawyers as consigliere. Friends. People who will give you good advice. In reality, they're employed by you to _legally protect_ you to the best of their ability. This means that (a) they view everything through the lense of "What should we do now, in order to have the best possible chance in court in a year?" (to the exclusion of things which might result in not ending up in court) & (b) they can be ordered to pursue another course of action. It's your ship, because it's your money. If you take your hand off the wheel, they're going to do their best given their perspective. But if you resolutely decide "Damn the torpedos", then they'll do their best with that too (shy of deciding not to work for you any longer). ------ bkandel So I agree with all the comments about needing a lawyer as to the specifics of your situation. As far as being unreasonable: The sense I get from reading your narrative is that from your perspective, because you wrote the code for the software, you are responsible for a large proportion of the total enterprise value. I think that in general, engineers tend to discount the contributions of the business side of things. Reading between the lines (and correct me if I'm being uncharitable here), your partner is responsible for the idea and overall business strategy, all capital and expenses(!), marketing, branding, sales, contracting, and customer support. So even though you wrote the code for the product, there's a very large gap between that and creating a competitive and profitable product. He probably views you, with some justification, as more easily replaceable, which is why he perceives you as having less leverage. So while you should certainly try to get as much as you can out of the situation, this description of events doesn't strike me as being particularly unfair to you. ------ xlii There is already comment about this, yet I'll allow myself to reinforce that: Do not approach anything without consulting lawyer first. Even if you see an advice that sound reasonable, don't follow it without consulting a lawyer. A lot of stuff is dependent on your current position, location, local laws, implicit and explicit clauses. Only lawyer can help you figure this stuff out. The only other advice I can give you, don't settle on one/first lawyer. Find 3, consult with each and only then make decision with whom you want to proceed. You can use gut feeling at that point. Good luck! ------ paulsutter Your position is stronger than you think. A buyer will want your cooperation as a top priority. The owner knows this, or will soon find out. You don’t need to persuade him so play it cool. Definitely talk to the owner. Maybe start by asking him, how does he expect the process to work? Will you be expected to continue working on the product? (play naive). Then let him talk, see what he’s thinking. Best to be calm. This is your strong card, but keep it low key. This will emerge during the sales negotiations. The owner is likely to present you with a new contract to sign during the sale process, and this will be your moment to negotiate a fair outcome. And you definitely want advice from a lawyer, starting now. At a minimum to review your existing contract. ~~~ flavor8 This is great advice. > Your position is stronger than you think. A buyer will want your cooperation > as a top priority. To emphasize this: as the sole developer, the buyer is going to want to retain you (at least for 6-12 months, depending on the complexity of the software). The buyer's tech team is not going to want to reverse engineer software that's 20 years old. The owner of the company knows this if he's talked to any potential buyers so far (and if he hasn't, will learn it.) > Best to be calm. This is your strong card, but keep it low key. The owner may resist your initial ask. If you at any point see red and are tempted to raise an ultimatum, step away from the send button / tell him that you'd like to continue the conversation later. The worst thing you can do is back him into a corner where his ego gets involved. You may well run into conflict, but better to leave him aware that you disagree until you pick up the conversation again than to get into a heated dispute (that will incentivize him to think about a solution in the meantime too). ------ glitchc How the amounts equate to salaries is completely irrelevant unfortunately. This is a legal issue, not a moral one. A new product may double the stock price of the company, but it does not entitle the engineer to a percentage of that increase, even if that product would not exist without said engineer. As per the contract, the engineer's labour is being compensated by wages and benefits. All the fruits of his/her labour are solely owned by the company. This is at least true in North America. 20% of royalties is not wages, and implies some sort of IP ownership agreement. Do you have such an agreement in place? Are there any patents with your name on them? The IP is (very likely) one of the assets of the business and will be listed on the net worth balance sheet. If you own a portion of the IP, you are entitled to a portion of the sale value of the company. If not the IP, then do you own any percentage of the company? You say he's a business partner, but it sounds like a work for hire arrangement (see first para). If the company owns all of the IP and your partner owns all of the company, it's basically his company, and you might be out of luck. You could still try negotiating a fairer payout, but it would be up to your partner's largesse. Furthermore, as you probably realize, the new owners are not obligated to honour a work for hire arrangement. ~~~ trhway >As per the contract, the engineer's labour is being compensated by wages and benefits. All the fruits of his/her labour are solely owned by the company. This is at least true in North America. [IANAL] Labour - yes. My understanding though is that despite wages, etc. the copyright/IP belongs to the engineer until there is an assignment agreement in place - that piece of paper we all sign coming to a new job and every time again when our patents get filed. If it were in the US and the OP doesn't have such assignment signed, i'd think the sale of the company without his cooperation would go nowhere. ~~~ glitchc In the absence of an explicit contract, the courts will take the typical approach or what would be reasonably accepted for that industry. Fairness of compensation also matters. If compensation seems reasonable for a work for hire, then that standard will be applied. If the payout is fairly consistent then it could look like a salary. Engineers cannot hold up sales of companies unless they have an ownership stake. They could dispute IP ownership but even then the sale would go through usually. If majority of the voting directorship is in favour of the sale, there’s nothing to stop it. The engineer could file a lien in that case. Perhaps that might give the buyer pause, or they could decide its easy enough to fight or pay out and may go through with it anyways. Liens do not block a sale if the buyer is willing to assume the risk. ------ zackmorris Partners that take more than 50% aren't really your partner, they're just employing/using you. They'll come up with all kinds of wonderful excuses as to why they shouldn't pay you, like they're the "business" person, they have to support their spouse but you're just single, it was their idea, etc etc etc. The best thing you can do is ask for 50%, then when they refuse, get out of the partnership. It took me a couple of decades to learn this simple truth, and cost me (I don't even want to think how much) money. I basically worked for less than $1 per hour for YEARS. If you take the 10%, then treat it like investment income and don't do any more work on the product. It's a big world out there, and the opportunity cost of sticking with it is the income you could be receiving from other projects. Sorry to be harsh, but this is the #1 thing I wish I would have told myself when I was young and motivated. ------ zulban Consult a lawyer. Bring all paperwork and contracts. Not doing so may be the most expensive mistake of your life. ------ j1elo I felt like asking this but I'm not sure it merits an Ask HN by itself: _how_ would you (in each of your different countries, contexts, etc) find a lawyer? Would you directly ask your personal network? Make a public Twitter announcement asking for recommendations? Just google "good lawyer for tech stuff"?... ~~~ kube-system Any time I need a professional with a specific focus, I always ask a professional I know and trust in the same/similar field for a reference. That has always worked well for me. ------ snarfy Of course, get a lawyer. That said, > I made a mistake in that I agreed to the 20% royalty rate without > negotiation initially, I know that much This is the root of the problem. You were always hoping some day this would be corrected, and now that day is here. I'd recommend crunching the numbers and back this up with data. There should be spreadsheets and charts made of sales figures, expenses, salaries, profits, loses, etc. Prove to your partner that you didn't really get a fair deal as the deal doesn't consider a sale. You should get more simply due to the change in risk. ------ ciguy Everything is negotiable, but based on the info you've given here you don't have much leverage in any potential negotiation. The only thing you might be able to use is the fact that the acquiring party will likely want your cooperation and possibly to keep you on for a while post acquisition. This is far from completely necessary though so it doesn't give you much. You are not being unreasonable but don't be surprised if your partner doesn't respond positively to your attempts at renegotiation. ------ chadcmulligan Don't know about the unreasonable, I don't think there's any such thing in business, but do you have an assignment of copyright set up? If not you may own all the code - depends on your jurisdiction - IANAL. ~~~ mb_72 Thanks. All copyright is clearly assigned to my partner, it's written into our agreements. I don't have a problem with this at all. ~~~ fizixer Looks like you do have a problem given that you created this thread in the first place. And I have a "suspicion" assigning full copyright to your partner, of the code you wrote, may have something to do with it. ~~~ mb_72 > And I have a "suspicion" assigning full copyright to your partner, of the > code you wrote, may have something to do with it. My problem is with wishing I had more certainty and, yes, compensation, related to a possible sale of the company. The code is not of use to me outside of the company itself, and from a developer satisfaction point of view I've enjoyed crafting and developing it; it's something I'm proud of, but it doesn't mean I need or want to own it. I think developers need to be good at 'letting go' their children. ------ cambalache There is fair and there is legal. It seems to me your requests are fair,but since I dont know anything about your contract or legal environment I agree that you should consult a lawyer to find out if your requests are legally enforceable. ------ tonystubblebine I would encourage changing your mindset here to think about a negotiation in terms of power rather than reasonableness. And I don't mean fists or violence type of power. It's much more what power do your future actions have to impact the sale value of the company? Those are the things that matter in a negotiation. When people talk about what's fair or reasonable, as the OP is doing, I think they get lost in arguments that don't hold any water. "I put in so much work" is much weaker than "This is how much money you'll make if you change the deal and how much money you'll lose if you don't change it." So, looking at it from the perspective of where do you have power, mainly you have power to keep working up to the sale of the company, to keep working after the sale of the company, or to leave right now. Do any of those things change the value of the sale? If so, you have a pretty clear path to negotiating for a piece of that value. I've been the business owner giving out a deal like this recently. The deal was that I'd guarantee a minimum amount of money and split the revenue, but I'd maintain 100% ownership. I think I was a bit more up front than this owner about what the implications were. IMO, even without ownership, it can be a pretty good alternative structure to a flat contracting rate or salary. For the employee/contractor it gives a lot of upside, while still giving the owner some leverage to renegotiate down the road if that upside gets out of control. Given that the future is hard to predict, this allows for some punting on deal terms. I literally told the counterparty, "If this really works, yes, you may live with some anxiety that I will come back and try to squeeze you." In practice, this deal has made a lot of money for both of us and the counterparty has been protected by my fear of losing continuity or momentum in a business that's doing well. But this also points to these sorts of contracts only being appropriate for experienced people. If you aren't comfortable that contracts are not permanent and that they can and will be renegotiated as leverage changes then you shouldn't be in these types of deals. ~~~ mb_72 Thanks for the detailed and helpful reply, much food for thought! ------ jsherry I’m shocked at all the suggestions to get a lawyer as step one. Yes you will need a lawyer at some point to get the terms into writing but what you need is business advice to prepare you for a convo w your employer. That sort of advice is hard to provide without thorough context but few things to think about: 1\. How key are you the sales process? If technical due diligence is a big part of the sales process then you have leverage. 2\. Are you a key employee that the acquirer will want to put under contract for a couple years to ensure continuity? If so, you have leverage. 3\. Do you generally get along w your employer? If so, you have soft leverage. As an earlier commenter said, it’s all about leverage, leverage, leverage. No (or almost no) owner is going to give you a significant portion of his or her windfall because it’s “the nice thing to do”. This will only get done if you have leverage and the courage to use it. P.s. there are all sorts of expensive tax implications here too when it comes to ownership transfer. Lawyers and accountants will be needed but not until you’ve neared some agreement in principle. ------ yowlingcat 1\. Get a lawyer. The advice they give you should outstrip anything you read here. 2\. Prepare to cut your losses in a worst case scenario. The best time to contractually quantify ownership stake is before you enter into the engagement. By the end, you have neither contractual support for your expected ownership stake, nor the leverage to ink it into a legally binding document. 3\. (my $0.02) Practically, the most you may get from this scenario is a very expensive learning experience. Whether or not you have the grounding to enter legal proceedings (or threaten that), the payoff compared to the mental and financial cost of litigating are likely not in your favor. Sorry this had to happen to you. It happened to me, too. I learned a valuable lesson when it comes to doing this kind of work -- you need to get an airtight legally binding document before you start working, or else you'll be exploited. That your business "partner" never formally entered into a contract with you likely indicates the latter. ------ dumbfounder Not sure if you are being reasonable or not, you need to decide that, there aren't enough details for me to be sure. Can they fire you and still go through with the sale? Are they a decent, reasonable human being? If they are a reasonably decent human I would say, hey I put a lot of work into this thing and I think I deserve a piece of the action from the sale. Then see what they say and get their point of view. And if they offers you a deal make sure it is on paper. If they are a terrible human and they can fire you and still go through with the sale, then without a prior deal you are not getting anymore money than you previously negotiated. If they are a terrible human being and they need you for the sale then you negotiate a deal asap with the aid of a lawyer, or you walk. ~~~ mb_72 Thanks. My partner is one of the most decent, calm and hard-working people that I know. We have a good relationship, and perhaps I'm over-worrying about these matters. ------ cwilkes “ At say a valuation of 20 x the average salary, I was thinking of 10% i.e. two years of an average salary. ” If you take that tack you’re going to end up with the short end of the stick. I realize you’re just asking for info but you should state this more positively. “My value to this company is $XXX as sales went from $A to $B and I can continue to grow it” Just that simple update changes the power dynamic and also puts you in a better mindset. Because I can guarantee you’ll crumble in negotiations when the buyer says “20 times a yearly salary! That’s far too high!” And you, as a software dev that probably undervalues your worth, will likely agree. Now you are on the back foot trying to justify your 15x, then 10x, then 5x, then some sort of rev share as they keep on chipping away. ------ gnicholas Folks are saying "get a lawyer". Note that you should get a lawyer who practices in the jurisdiction that governs your contract. It sounds like you might be in different countries, and even if you were just in different states this would be important. Also, in addition to your contract, think about any emails or even conversations that affected your relationship. Most people don't realize that oral agreements are just as binding as written agreements in nearly all cases (not for transfers of land, or agreements that, by their terms, must take more than a year to complete). The difference is that oral agreements are more likely to be a he-said-she-said, since there is generally no documented proof of the precise terms. ------ gregshap This is a negotiation so think about your leverage. Reasoning about fairness is very little leverage. Two Questions: 1\. How important are you to the _ongoing_ revenue of the business after it changes hands? If you're an ongoing key person, you do have some leverage with the current owner. You may have even more leverage negotiating a consulting contract with the buyer. This is a business negotiation and then a lawyer can help you draft a good agreement. 2\. Do you believe your 20% royalty continues in the event of a sale? If your 20% royalty is supposed to survive the sale, maybe you should negotiate a buyout of that royalty. There are lots of factors in valuing this, but your anchoring point would be 20% of the expected sale price, and its a financial discussion not a fairness discussion. ------ JamesBarney > I wish to renegotiate our agreements to include a clause that gives me part > of the sale value of the company as a cash payout, the reasoning here being > that my work has increased substantially the value of the company. At say a > valuation of 20 x the average salary, I was thinking of 10% i.e. two years > of an average salary. I feel that my value to the company is larger than > what is being recognised currently, given my contributions (i.e. every > single line of code in the company's products have been written by me). One very unfortunate and many times unfair part of negotiations is they are based on your future work, not your previous work. Also hundreds of hours of work for 2 years of salary sounds like you are well compensate already. ------ jaybrendansmith Your only leverage is a) Your partner's good faith and good relationship as your employer, and b) Your willingness to leave your situation. Both are worth something, and leaving will have negative impacts on your employer. These situations can get ugly, because once you broach the subject, your employer may not only decline to negotiate, they might start looking to replace you. Tread carefully. Much is dependent on your hopefully warm relationship and the business ethic of your boss. ------ matt_s Like others have said, talk to a lawyer. But first - who owns the source code? Are there legal protections in your country (assuming not US) like a copyright? That could be your leverage in a business negotiation if you own the code. If your partner doesn't want to entertain renegotiating, then maybe say from this point forward (since he is aiming to sell the business) that any dev work needs to paid for separately from the royalties on existing work. Find other work in the meantime (maybe before this step). ------ mathattack The key question is what happens to each of you if you don’t come to an agreement. If you can get a good job elsewhere or otherwise monetize your time, you are in a good position. If the company fails without you, you are in a better position. If he’s able to replace you easily you’re in a weaker position. Also - if he’s covering expenses and you aren’t, it’s not really an 80/20 split. If costs equal half of sales, then it becomes a 30/20 (60/40) split. ------ fjfaase It is not clear what kind of relationship you have with your business partner. It seems you are not a (co-)owner of the company, but does that mean that you are an employee. If you have the legal status of an employee, I guess you might not have any right on part of the sale. But maybe you have some right for a compensation if you become unemployed as a result of the sale. ------ cantabridgeman Well, there is nothing wrong with trying to negotiate. However, if it is true that you have an agreement, and if it seems your partner has fairly respected his part of the agreement, I don't think you would have any legal case. As an owner of the business, he took on all the risk, paid for all the costs. You agreed to be paid a royalty. ~~~ dgb23 How is that any different, generally speaking? If you agree to be payed a royalty, you agree to take on risk. ------ battery423 Talk to him first. "hey i thought about our agreement and i'm not that comfortable with it" I would like to discuss it with you. ~~~ phkahler Since things are coming to a close I dont think OP has any leverage in the situation. ~~~ eps He's got plenty of leverage, assuming that the product is a part of the company sale pitch, i.e. the company is not being sold just for its customer list, website rankings or other non-product assets. Edit - looking through OP's commenting history, it appears they are working on the real estate market software. In this case it is _very_ likely that the company is being sold for the list of its customers to a larger competitor, to allow migrating customers to the competitor's platform. In this case the OP has little to no re-negotiating power, because the product is not what being sold here. ------ RantyDave 25% or you won't work on it any more. If you won't work on it any more the sale will _not_ go ahead. Negotiate a better arrangement (for your time) with the purchaser. ------ bartelby You need a lawyer ~~~ mb_72 Thanks, that does indeed appear to be the consensus here, and it's already on my action plan of what to do before talking to my partner about things. ------ dangus Nobody here can help, and you shouldn’t trust them even if they happen to say something helpful on this forum. You need a business/contract lawyer in your locality. ~~~ sushshshsh Yes we should never, ever, under any circumstance, ever bother asking questions on the internet about anything. ------ Chris2048 again, get a lawyer. But out of interest: * are your "agreements" a legal contract, or verbal? Are you an employee or a contractor? * what are the terms wrt duration? was it 20% royalties while you continued as a developer, 20% for the lifetime of the product? Do you have any say in e.g. pricing/offers, which would affect sales/sale price, and hence your % * you say they "included payment for development work" but that "however then I have needed to pay these pay with reductions in royalties" \- if it comes out of your royalties, how does it include payment for dev work? i.e. how does this differ from " _not_ included payment for development work"; Do you mean he gave you an upfront loan to cover living/dev cost, but there is no additional payment for these on top of royalties? * is your salary 2x avarage salary (in your home), or 2x salary _for that job type or industry_?

Show HN: Balanced Payments Client for Go - tpryme https://github.com/bnoguchi/balanced-go ====== mygrant Unsure why there is neither a link to what Balanced Payments is (I had to look it up: [https://www.balancedpayments.com/](https://www.balancedpayments.com/)) not a description of what it could be used for/examples. I'm normally very excited about this kind of stuff, but coming in without context and being greeted with a barebones README almost made me just close it.

A super lightweight AMD-compliant JavaScript loader - jzeng https://github.com/zengjialuo/kittyjs ====== jzeng only 2.8kb while requireJS is 6.2kb. The implement is naive so u can easily read the source to understand how AMD works.

Denver's tax on web and app development draws ire from software execs - cdr http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_26006092/denvers-tax-web-and-app-development-draws-ire ====== mschuster91 > "If we go out to Westminster to go to Costco to buy sodas for employees in > the office in Denver, we're on the hook to pay the difference between the > sales tax in Westminster and the sales tax in Denver," said Stefan Ramsbott, > 303 Software's co-founder. Is this supposed to be a joke?! Seriously, what kind of bullsh.t is this? I accept having to pay VAT and customs when importing stuff from another _country_ , but from another _city_ in the _same country_? Sorry, but the way I see this is as a perfect thing to (ab)use as a government if you want to crack down on someone... don't enforce it, only when doing a "random tax compliance audit"... ~~~ patio11 This is virtually universal for sales taxes in the United States -- they're all paired with "use taxes" which you're supposed to calculate and remit yourself. It is, far and away, the least complied tax in America. People occasionally get prosecuted for it, largely when a high-dollar transaction is intentionally effected in a low-tax jurisdiction to avoid sales taxes. The canonical example is rich folks in New York buying art in Connecticut. ~~~ RyJones Boeing hands over airplanes in Portland (PDX) to avoid Washington's sales tax. ------ rexreed As much as I find these taxes ridiculous (and also hard to predict for a business owner), Couldn't they just add 3.62% to their billed costs to cover those expenses? On a $100k software gig, this would be just $3620 or so. Round it to $105k and they should be pulling in the same amount. On $10k it's just $362. So that would maybe shift a $10k project bid to $10.5k to cover those taxes and still bring in the same net to the company. Would that really make them uncompetitive? "Cost of business" and all that? ~~~ x0x0 Why are these taxes ridiculous, unless you don't support the idea of taxation at all? Lots of economic activity gets taxed, and fundamentally, if we want to have nice things (roads, utilities, public education, police, court system, etc) _someone has to pay for them_. It's more than reasonable to want businesses -- which use many of the above, and crucially rely on eg good public schools to get parents to live and work near the business -- to chip in. That said, saying a 3.6% tax makes a software business uneconomical is pretty silly. If that makes the difference between profitability and unprofitability either the business was mostly investing profits internally into growth or was nearly uneconomical anyway. It mostly sounds to me like bitching that the owners may have to settle for Hawaii instead of St Barts this year. ~~~ alistairSH For me, it's not that these taxes, in particular, are ridiculous, but that the tax code is so freaking complicated, that I sometimes need a CPA to double- check my records (AMT, odd-ball deductions, etc). And this is for my personal income taxes - it's even worse for business owners. ------ _delirium Does anyone have a list of which states consider web/software/tech services to be subject to sales tax? I know Texas does [1], but haven't found an overall list. [1] [http://window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/taxpubs/tx96_259.pdf](http://window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/taxpubs/tx96_259.pdf) ------ fred_durst Quick back of the napkin here. $35K a quarter. If that is the sales tax at 3.62%, then this company is bringing in just under $1 Million in revenues a quarter. Its possible that its not what the full $35K is for, but if you are bringing in $4 Million a year in revenue, you can probably afford a qualified accountant to take care of this stuff and I can't be all that sympathetic. ------ gnoway This article doesn't say anything about it, but I wonder how these businesses were handling their taxes in the first place. Helping you avoid these scenarios is one of the things a good CPA firm does. ~~~ CugelTheClever This is Matt from 303 Software. We pay our taxes in full and on time. Our two accounting firms and one law firm had never heard of this tax until the auditor showed up at my door. And sadly we weren't the only ones in Denver who thought they were in compliance. ------ CugelTheClever Hi folks, this is Matt from 303 Software, the dev shop in the article. Happy to answer your questions here. ------ robgibbons This is some BS. Services are not usually taxed. Production of software is a service, there are no physical products. ~~~ _delirium Some states do tax services (sometimes with some exemptions). Other states don't tax services, but do tax sales of digital goods, such as iTunes downloads, ebooks, or apps. There's no blanket "sales tax = physical goods" rule (it's not clear why there would be, especially in cases like ebooks vs. paper books).

Scientist says aliens in UFOs might be Earthlings from the future - mmhsieh https://thenextweb.com/science/2020/01/24/scientist-says-aliens-in-ufos-might-be-earthlings-from-the-future/ ====== bediger4000 Interesting. How do/did/will they solve the "space problem"? [https://medium.com/swlh/the-space-problem-of-time- travel-93b...](https://medium.com/swlh/the-space-problem-of-time- travel-93b873264b98) ~~~ a3n If you only want to go back as far as 2nd half 20th century, there are probably logs of GPS devices, possibly available to future travelers, that could help minimize this problem. Then if you want to go back a little further, the effect is smaller than it would have been, since you "made it" to a predicted location. Or maybe it "hasn't" been solved, and ʻOumuamua took a really long time to "get back" ... "here." [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua)

Most VPN Services Are Terrible - dsr12 https://gist.github.com/kennwhite/1f3bc4d889b02b35d8aa ====== rietta I recently cancelled my PIA account. It was so incredibly slow as to be unusable most of the time. Thought through my threat model and decided it wasn't worth the hassle. I use tethering with my mobile provider when I am in dodgy places and make sure that I have an SSL connection to anything important. ------ mr_blobs VPN services are terrible because most people using them are downloading torrents/abusing bandwidth limitations. ~~~ jrnichols I use mine for neither of those. Primary use: * Simply browsing the internet while at work, since our "guest network" is poorly configured and has a bunch of things blocked. (not for any valid reason, other than "this is what was blocked by default and nobody feels like changing it.") * Watching the European version of NFL Game Pass. We simply want to watch football and not have to purchase a cable subscription or deal with media blackouts. I barely even look at torrents anymore.

Is Immutable.js inactive/dead? - callumlocke https://github.com/facebook/immutable-js/issues/1012 ====== HugoDaniel "Immutable.js is still used heavily both within Facebook and in the broader dev community." That does not mean it is alive. It certainly looks like it is dead (dead as in it is commonly used when referring to a project that was abandoned), specially since it is backed by Facebook and the last commit was a change on the readme file done in Sep 19, 2016 :/

What's an effective way to learn a new programming language? - hotz You&#x27;ve got a &quot;9-5&quot; job and a family waiting for you at home. There&#x27;s probably 2-3 hours of freedom, how would you use that time to learn a new language? With the idea of switching career paths - going from PHP to Clojure&#x2F;Scala. ====== PaulHoule If you choose Clojure get [https://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Practical-Lisp- Wo...](https://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Practical-Lisp- World/dp/1449394701/) and [https://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Cookbook-Recipes- Functional-P...](https://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Cookbook-Recipes-Functional- Programming/dp/1449366171/) these two books are much better than the free documentation for learning how to "Think in Clojure". Expect to read them over and over again, maybe sitting on the bus, spinning at the gym, or any time you can. Conceive of a cool demo that would get upvoted on HN, be put on your LinkedIn page, get talked about at an interview. Start with something small and scale up until it "clicks" I would recommend Python as a practical language which I see customers asking for by name. Python has great libraries for making web sites and apps, as well as data analysis, graphing, "intelligent" applications involving machine learning, etc. Python lets you get the abstract syntax tree from the compiler and transform it, so LISP-style metaprogramming is convenient and mainstream. I have been paid to write Scala and I do not think it is a better choice than Clojure, Python or even Java. C# is the best "better Java" at the moment, although Java is slowly catching up. If you want type systems and static metaprogramming that will blow your mind, learn the very latest in C++. ------ IanDrake Udemy has good classes in general. Not sure about scala. Wait until they're on sale for $10- $15 and then buy a few. I watch them in 1.5x - 2x speed and slow down only when needed.

Bowe Bergdahl, Army Sergeant Held by Taliban Since 2009, Is Released - ChrisAntaki http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bowe-bergdahl-army-sergeant-held-taliban-2009-released-n119271 ====== ChrisAntaki "Bergdahl, 28, was freed from Afghanistan — in exchange for five prisoners who were held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center — and is back in the hands of the U.S. military, the officials said."

SpaceX’s Starship SN1 prototype blows up during pressure test on its Texas pad - eternalny1 https://www.geekwire.com/2020/spacexs-starship-sn1-prototype-blows-pressure-test-texas-pad/ ====== grecy Elon just said this 12 hours ago: "Failure has to be an option. What you want is to reward success but there should be minor consequences for trying and not succeeding. And major consequences for not trying #AWS2020" [1] They are rapidly iterating, and I expect them to destroy up a lot of Starship hardware in the next few months as they perfect it. [1] [https://youtu.be/dPwxfzvhlLA](https://youtu.be/dPwxfzvhlLA) ~~~ nikofeyn we've come a long way from "failure is not an option". this is typical musk spin. of course we can't be afraid to fail, but that isn't what happened here. catastrophic failures should not be considered "oh well" situations. move fast and break things isn't a design and engineering approach worth subscribing to. i'd appreciate a more measured response from spaceX. the quote "Not much to worry about here" from spaceX is pretty annoying. a less dismissive tone would be better, because from my point of view, they just had a pretty large and expensive failure. that's bothersome from someone getting a ton of public funding. a response of "we take failures very seriously" rather than basically "yea, that'll happen" would be more professional. ~~~ pdonis If you don't own any SpaceX stock and aren't planning on flying on one of their spaceships when the time comes, why do you care? ~~~ laichzeit0 How, exactly, would one own SpaceX stock? ~~~ babesh [https://www.baronfunds.com/product- detail](https://www.baronfunds.com/product-detail) One of the Baron Funds invested in SpaceX. ------ gpm The pressure vessel failed during testing with nitrogen, no explosion occurred. This probably isn't that much of a surprise, they knew the welds were far from ideal and already had improvements on the way. > We had the wrong settings! To make the welds super flat & strong, we’re > building a heavy duty, custom planisher, but just having the right settings > is a major improvement. [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1232556310874533888](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1232556310874533888) The next version is already being assembled right beside where this one failed. ~~~ Narkov It definitely was an explosion. I think you mean it wasn't a combustion. >explosion > a violent expansion in which energy is transmitted outwards as a shock wave. > a sudden outburst of something such as violent emotion, especially anger. ------ bpodgursky If the SLS blew up during testing, it would set the program back a literal decade (or more). If the James Webb telescope failed during deploy, it would be a $10-$20 billion loss -- and it would never be re-attempted. NASA needs to re-learn from SpaceX's ability to iterate on cheap designs and flush out flaws quickly. I say re-learn, because they DID know how to do this correctly during the Gemini / Apollo eras (TONS of rockets blew up before they attempted human spaceflight). But culturally, something went deeply wrong, perhaps when we reached the Space Shuttle era, and they lost the willingness to ever accept failure or pushing limits -- the same process we tell tell children is critical to ever learning. ~~~ dredmorbius Safi Bahcall's _Loonshots_ describes the phase-change transition which happens in organisations as they grow in size and value safety over innovation. [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250185969](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250185969) [https://www.worldcat.org/title/loonshots-how-to-nurture- the-...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/loonshots-how-to-nurture-the-crazy- ideas-that-win-wars-cure-diseases-and-transform-industries/oclc/1129600169) New Books Network interview: [https://newbooksnetwork.com/safi-bahcall- loonshots-how-to-nu...](https://newbooksnetwork.com/safi-bahcall-loonshots- how-to-nurture-the-crazy-ideas-that-win-wars-cure-diseases-and-transform- industries-st-martins-2019/) ~~~ ColanR It would be interesting to apply those ideas to American society in general. ------ redis_mlc Maybe somebody can explain this to me. Welds are supposed to be tested at the weld level, not at the vehicle level. So what is wrong with their process or QA? ~~~ frankharv You are right. At the very basic levels we have PT. This is a test with dye sprayed on the weld and a developer sprayed on to show the defects. This is very commonly done. Next we have UltraSonic(UT) testing. This requires expensive equipment and a good examiner to interpret. Third we have X-Ray. This is used on welds that are very important as it is also hard to do and interpret. It also requires the weld to be ground smooth to distinguish flaws from ordinary weld. I am sure there are a variety of other non destructive testing (NDT )techniques. These are the common ones used in industry. I do want to mention that pressure vessels are hard to make. Especially something so large. This could actually be a design problem and not welds. Pressure vessels are often tested at 5/3 their working pressure. So failures at testing are not uncommon. ~~~ frankharv I really don't understand the build method they use. Ideally you would use a turntable to rotate the cylinder while welding the sections together with a sub-arc machine. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-hfExEmGsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-hfExEmGsE) Elon blaming "settings" seems like a silly explanation. There should be weld engineers and destructive testing done before the first beads are welded on an actual tank. ~~~ gpm > Ideally you would use a turntable to rotate the cylinder while welding the > sections together with a sub-arc machine. > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-hfExEmGsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-hfExEmGsE) Uh, at least in the video that steel is pretty thick. Starships skin is slightly less than 4mm thick... while in that video they have a 2cm deep groove, would the same technique actually work? For what it's worth, ULA stainless steel (<1mm thickness) upper stages are resistance welded instead [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0fG_lnVhHw&t=41m10s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0fG_lnVhHw&t=41m10s) That said, I think a lot of the decisions right now are based on "what can we quickly experiment with" not "what is a good long term plan". Building a 9m turntable (diameter of the rocket) would take a long time. ~~~ frankharv I agree a 9m turntable would take some time to make. But once made you could crank these vessels out very fast. 4mm skin sounds OK and I am sure there are some structural supports inside to keep it from collapsing. I am not a weld engineer so I cannot say if Sub-Arc would be the best technique. I know that ships skins are being built with it. ~~~ erikpukinskis You’re talking about production engineering. You don’t really do that until your design starts to be nailed down. It’s not. ------ BooneJS How much has SpaceX had to “start over” from what NASA and others have researched over the decades?

Google Domains DDNS Updater: Python - jasonslay https://github.com/jasonslay/googleddns ====== nadams Not to be that guy - but did you test this? parameters = {'hostname': self.hostname, 'myip': myip} Change to: parameters = {'hostname': self.hostname, 'myip': ip} Change: for host in hosts: print(host) To: for host in hosts: host.update(myip) print(host) ~~~ jasonslay Good catch on the myip vs ip syntax error. It worked because of the myip global. The later change isn't required because the constructor calls the update. I may go ahead and adopt your update suggestion to make it clearer what is actually going on. Thanks!

How to Survive the Apocalypse on $20 - feint http://hsta.pen.io/ ====== electromagnetic > We also put out a chainsaw, because you don’t want to go through a 2x4 with > a hand tool. I don't think buying a chainsaw is practical, buy a proper carpenters saw (AKA cross-cut saw) and you'll be able to get through a 2x4 in less time than it takes to even start a chainsaw. It's easy to maintain (about once a month a spray down with WD40 will keep it from rusting, which rust will only become a pain in the ass if you've left it in direct contact with water or after about a decade hung up in your average garage). A 24" (full-draw, why full-draw? Because you'll have to work 3 times as hard with a 15" half-draw as you're spending 1/2 your cut moving slowly and keeping alignment) carpenters saw will run you around $30 for a top-notch brand. If you're going to buy a chainsaw don't. You can get a battery operated sawzall (reciprocating saw) for a similar or lesser price. It would likely be cheaper and safer to buy a miniature generator and a sawzall. The sawzall also has the nice ability to be used for precision and with a metal-cut blade can be used for other things (IE cut open a jammed lock). You can get a hackzall (one handed reciprocating saw) for around $130 MSRP and sawzalls for around $200 MSRP both often include two batteries and a charger. If you're going to have a generator, you can go as low as $70 for a 9A sawzall. Chainsaws are dangerous for even trained users. Sawzalls are hardly dangerous when operated by idiots. A fullsize sawzall can be operated with one hand. A hackzall is easily operated with one hand (I'm talking an electric knife level of easy). Carpenters saws are the safest you can get. Aren't effected by power and last a solid decade in a good location with zero maintenance. WD40 it once a month and it'll last your lifetime if you're keeping it solely for emergency use. ~~~ zach This is excellent advice, but I note that you ignore the advantages a chainsaw has in defending against brain-hungry zombies. ~~~ electromagnetic Sawzall is good for it too, plus you won't damage your blades cutting up bone in case it was actually a neighbour who'd contracted rabies shortly after being scalded by falling into a deep fryer during the earth quake. Plus, you could spend the difference on a battery powered nail gun, which if you tape up the guard you'd be able to use as a make-shift rifle. That way you've got a nailgun for range and could have an easily used hackzall for melee (just make sure you use a nailed-wood blade so it'll cut flesh and bone adequately). Plus both easily store in a tote bag. ~~~ Zak _...battery powered nail gun, which if you tape up the guard you'd be able to use as a make-shift rifle._ I don't think you were being serious, but just in case anybody thinks you were: that wouldn't be accurate enough to hunt small game, nor would it be powerful enough to reliably take down large animals, humans or zombies. ~~~ electromagnetic I have confidence in humanity that some people can still interpret a joke. My friend cleared a compressed air nail gun's chamber whilst we were building a dock, it managed about 30ft and was visibly tumbling the entire way. I would be surprised if a battery powered nail gun managed 10ft. Plus, a nail is essentially a flachette and has virtually no stopping power. You're aiming for the head or nothing. You'd likely be better clubbing the zombies (or bunny rabbits) to death with the nail gun than actually trying to kill anything with it. It would, however, get you into a good position when the New World Order sets in an crucifixions become all the rage again. You'd be able to crucify at a significant person-per-minute rate! Say hello to the executioners job. ------ ck2 Hmm, if you are in San Francisco and you are in an "apocalyptic event" you are now likely floating in the Pacific ocean. Your $20 kit does nothing for this predicament. Perhaps spend that $20 to research moving to a new location that is not on a major fault line with guaranteed major earthquakes? I mean Japan only has so much room and they built for surviving all but the worst, but what is the excuse with all the land in the USA? We have hurricanes here but no-one is going to be "surprised" by a hurricane (unless you live next to a levee I guess). ~~~ nostromo The Pacific Coast from Northern California on up into Canada is probably one of the most human-friendly environments on earth. My apartment in SF has a heater I almost never use and no air conditioner at all. The same was true in my Seattle house. A huge portion of the energy here is created by dams, not coal or nuclear, which keeps the air pristine. There's plenty of sustainable fresh water in most areas, and some amazing natural habitats nearby, like Yosemite, Mt Rainier, and Mount Hood. I'll happily deal with volcanoes and earthquakes to live here. ~~~ geuis I'll second that. I basically grew up in Florida and have been through my fair share of hurricanes. I love California and SF in particular and more than happily will deal with the occasional earthquake. ------ JoeAltmaier Nobody mentions a gun. I know its not civilized or public-spirited, but after "the apocalypse" very few people are going to act civilized. ~~~ JoachimSchipper I don't think that that's borne out by the data - sure, New Orleans saw some looting, but how many people do you think actually needed to protect themselves? We're not talking the zombie apocalypse here, just the regular flavour. ~~~ mathgladiator I'm preparing for a zombie apocalype in two ways. If I'm still human, then I'll kick ass. If I'm a zombie, then I'll be a boss-fight for the survivors. ------ johnohara You may want to save your $20 and read "Surviving in Argentina." <http://ferfal.blogspot.com/> ~~~ runjake Backstory: Ferfal is a rather well-known guy in the online preparedness community. He kept an online diary of his experiences during the Argentinian economic collapse & related chaos dealing with a collapsed infrastructure & gangs of thugs. ------ guylhem Excellent read - but all that won't fit in a backpack :-) Extract from another site I follow : "Remember, you must be able to RUN with this bag (therefore I suggest a backpack)". Good thinking ferfal! To trim it up, check ferfal.blogspot.com for some real life experience. The bag is just step #1. ~~~ drinian I carry just about all that stuff (no chainsaw) in my round-the-world backpack, with space to spare for everyday items. Definitely not overkill. ------ mark_l_watson Good article, but: I think that a family should plan for several weeks of total self-reliance, not days. Add: solar cooker, additional water, CO2 packed rice and lentils, extra vitamins. A gun, if you know how to use one, for hunting and self protection. Another reason to have requirements for a longer time period: if there should ever be a fatal large scale flu epidemic (or some other pandemic), it would be really good to isolate the entire family. ------ secretasiandan I'm not sure that the cisterns he speaks of are meant for drinking, I think they're meant for fighting fires. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Fire_Department_A...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Fire_Department_Auxiliary_Water_Supply_System#Cisterns) If they were used for drinking in the case of an emergency, I think you'd have to treat it a little bit unless they flush them regularly. ~~~ electromagnetic After any disaster you should boil any water you're going to drink. It seems excessive, but without a supply of clean water you really don't want to get diarrhoea. You really don't want to get diarrhoea if you're idiotic enough to be sodium-conscious with your disaster kit as then you're really risking death due to electrolyte imbalance. ~~~ JoeAltmaier There are many water-purification techiniques superior to boiling. heating water takes time, fuel, equipment, a stable clean environment. Iodine tablets take a water bottle, plus water. ~~~ electromagnetic That's true. I'd say enough for 2L per day for 3 days would be enough for a single person for your average kit. If it's taking longer than 3 days for things to get back to normal I'd suggest being out of the city where you can get easier access to wood and water. ~~~ kragen My experience at Burning Man is that 8 liters per day per person is a more usual rate of consumption, because you need water not just for drinking, but also for cooking food, washing dishes, washing your body, washing your hands, and washing wounds. ------ ctdonath I did my own variant of this a few years back: [http://www.neardeathexperiments.com/smf/index.php?topic=1966...](http://www.neardeathexperiments.com/smf/index.php?topic=1966.0) ------ tomp I wish there were some instructions on what to do with all those items... I would love to know why a bandana, aluminium foil and a bleach are used for in an emergency. ~~~ JoeAltmaier Its ok, you will find out during the emergency - "hey! I have to sterilize this sewing kit before I sew up Jimmy! Anybody got some bleach?" ~~~ tomp Thanks, that's exactly what I meant. The problem is that if you lack experience (most of people in the west have little experience taking care for themselves on their own) it's easy to forget such things. Btw, you can also sterilize a needle using a lighter. ~~~ tsuraan FWIW, you'd probably want to sterilize the thread as well. That's the part that's staying in the wound, and it's a bit easier to sterilize a thread with bleach than with fire. ~~~ JoeAltmaier And about "hand sanitizer". Its alcohol. Protocol for sterilizing in alcohol requires minutes of submersion. So don't think those little squirt bottles are going to be helpful. ------ timerickson Quick! Someone set up shop to sell this as a kit for $30. ~~~ davidw "Survivalist" stuff was probably a decent niche business in the 80ies. ~~~ icey It's a huge market now. ------ rsheridan6 This isn't written by that Tom Price, is it? <http://www.survivorstvseries.com/Tom.htm> ------ vlisivka It is funny to read these comments AFTER surviving of huge economic crisis, Chernobyl and few smaller disasters. 15 years ago, at practice lesson about radiation protection in University, I found that the most radioactive item in the class room is me. How to deal with that fact, when you have no money even to buy enough food to live? I had only one choice - buy ticket back to my radioactive home, grab our self-grown radioactive food and return back to University. Half of people in the country were is similar situation. If we are talking about Apocalypse, and not about camping in the woods, then you must consider that you will need to live in contaminated environment and there will be no room in clean environment for you. You will stay for decades in areas with moderate chemical or radioactive contamination, like Japan today (if nuclear reactor will blow up). Surviving in woods is much harder and expensive task than surviving in home. I mean, than you will need much more time and energy to solve your basic problems, like food, water, fuel, hygiene, etc., so you will have no enough time to play with camping, even when you are alone, without wife and children. Try that with pregnant woman, or injured man, or 1 year old child, etc. For me, idea, that I should walk to radioactive woods to survive economic crisis, sounds crazy. I can die in about 15 minutes if I will go into woods unprepared with temperature of -30°C (-22°F) outdoor. Even when I will be equipped with saw. My recommendations: Always keep full cigarette lighter with LED, multi-tool pocket knife, and small candle (anti-mosquito, preferably: slice large candle into smaller slices) in your pocket AND in your outdoor clothing - you will use them much more often than any other survival tool. I use them few times every month. Keep needle, thread, plaster, healthing balm and another multi-tool in your backpack. I use one of them 5-6 times every year. TRAIN yourself - if you are injured, you can prepare wound with healthing balm, then boil water in paper bag or plastic bottle, disinfect thread in water and needle in flame, blend needle, and then sew up yourself. But will you do that properly and fast enough when you will do that for first time? What you will do when you are wet and you will have only 15 minutes to build hut and make fire before you will die? Will be you are smart enough to use your wet clothing as material for hut and put candle inside your clothing? Can you make wood candle or torch using your multitool when your candle will be near to expire? For long-time survival, good tools and instruments are very helpful. My parent has garage full of instruments - it helps a lot. But lack of some instruments and replacement parts made us mad some years ago - we just had no money to buy them (low market - high prices, we had 3-5 times less money, and they were about 5 times more expensive than today). Lack of replacement parts or tools to repair equipment forces you to drop your most used equipment. You use it often -> it wears out fast -> you cannot repair or replace it -> you lose it. ------ sigzero If there is one...$20 would be worthless. ~~~ ceejayoz You're supposed to spend the $20 _before_ the earthquake.

Show HN: I created a Python framework for fast Slack bot development - NFicano https://github.com/nficano/gendo ====== mjhea0 Nice! Just added to -> [https://github.com/realpython/list-of-python-api- wrappers#sl...](https://github.com/realpython/list-of-python-api- wrappers#slack---team-communication-platform)

Show HN: Socializing the YC way - phesse14 http://tiesport.com ====== phesse14 Hi everyone! I'm submitting my project to hear from you and see what you think about it. We've developed it in Madrid (Spain) and I wanted to tested outside our city. 1) Write whatever you feel, either if you think is great or a piece of junk 2) What do you think about the texts? Are clear enough? 3) Do you feel the way startup communities socialize can be extrapolated to other sectors? (investment banking, consultancy...) 4) Suggestions, improvements, dreams, unicorns...all are welcome This job has been made with a lot of coffee, patience, Django, Jquery, CSS and users complains Many thanks! Cheers Pablo

What They Don't Tell You About Public Speaking - philipp-spiess http://zachholman.com/posts/what-they-dont-tell-you-about-public-speaking/ ====== nostromo "There’s one mistake I consistently see made by speakers both novice and experienced: they’re not excited about their talk." I'm a nervous presenter. The way I used to combat this was with a poker face. No smiles, no laughing, no gestures, monotone voice... I'd do anything not to clue them in to my nervousness. This is a flawed approach for me. People are very forgiving of humanizing nerves and foibles. People aren't so forgiving of boring, monotone talks. What I try to do now, with some success, is to embrace (not suppress) the nervous energy. To 'feel' the same way I do before a challenging ski slope. I'm in my 30s and I don't get adrenaline spikes very often like I did in my 20s (like say, when flirting with someone new that I really like). So I'm teaching myself to seek out places to present, so I can get and enjoy that intense energy spike. Adrenaline is the best, cheapest, healthiest, and most legal drug available to you; don't shy away from it. And give some of that energy back to your audience. ~~~ esrauch This is a bit off topic, but according to wikipedia; "Adverse reactions to adrenaline include palpitations, tachycardia, arrhythmia, anxiety, headache, tremor, hypertension, and acute pulmonary edema." I've always thought that a true straight-edge person wouldn't deliberately trigger adrenaline releases. The fact that your body produces it given a particular stimulus doesn't seem to really be relevant to the "goodness" of the substance. If your body produced cocaine when you get in a mosh pit is that different than just taking cocaine? ~~~ corin_ Adrenaline doesn't have any long-term health risks, unlike cocaine. If cocaine was safe in the long run, and I found that I didn't get negative side-effects and it helped me do <x>, I'm not sure what the downside would be in me using cocaine. When I used to be a singer I personally found adrenaline would only come with more important performances (bigger concerts, live radio), never with smaller concerts on recording sessions - I never experienced any downsides, and it helped me do better. If I could have found a way to get an adrenaline rush all the time, I definitely would have grabbed it with both hands. edit: Given the topic of this actual thread, an interesting side-note is that despite never having problems with music, I'm pretty terrible at public speaking. ------ krschultz Great post, especially the concept 'Talks should always be reactionary rather than anticipatory'. A public speaking ancedote for all those that are nervous at public speaking or currently aren't that good at it. My father excels at public speaking. He has done many conferences, TV interviews, company all-hands meetings, regular presentations, etc. He is natural, comfortable, excited, etc. Most imporantly, he can really read a room and react to people and tune his presentation on the fly to what interests the crowd. But it was not always so. When he was in his 20s, he was absolutely terrible at speaking in front of a room. At one point early in his career he was giving a presentation and his boss turned to the HR guy that had hired him and said 'is it too late to undo this one', purposely, loud enough for him to hear. Over the course of 5 or 6 years he dramatically improved at public speaking. Public speaking is a learned skill. You can practice it. Do not leave making the presentation to the last minute, finish it a week before hand and practice 40 times. Comfort comes from being prepared. Walk the room beforehand. Check all of your gear and have backups of everything just in case. Be prepared to use no slides so it won't be a completely new experience. Have fewer slides, it makes you feel more naked but the audience won't notice if you get things out of order a bit. Toastmasters helps. If you are younger, join a debate or model congress club. It's like shooting a foul shot, you just need more reps. ~~~ why-el It will be awesome if your dad had a book on what happened in those 5 to 6 years. Of course I am in no position to provide as useful an advice, since I am still a student and the toughest audience I presented against are themselves students. However, I find the preparing by replaying the presentation to yourself a little daunting. I used to do that and there always seems to be something that goes wrong, especially that I am supposed to have memorized the presentation. I don't really trust my memory that much, so what I started doing is knowing the topic very well, have some general enough guidelines, and just talk to the audience. It's classic improvising and it worked for me up to now. ~~~ krschultz I wouldn't say you want to memorize the presentation. In fact I think the more you write out for yourself, write on your slides, or try to memorize, the more difficult the presentation becomes. The practice is more about stumbling a bunch of times. I hate when I repeat the same word or phrase within a few sentences of each other. If I notice that I say the same thing twice on one slide, maybe I'll stand there for a second and think of a new way. The next time I practice through I might use a 3rd way, but at least I'm not repeating. I only really memorize maybe the first two sentences I'm going to stay just to get the ball rolling smoothly, and maybe a final sentence so my exit is clean. ~~~ saraid216 I'd go so far as to say you absolutely don't want to memorize your speech, unless you're at the level of Important Remarks for Important People like the State of the Union. Instead, you want to memorize all the key features, jokes, and wry remarks. You can write out your speech, if it helps. But read it. Out loud. To a wall. About ten or fifteen times. Read it, without looking at the paper (except when you forget what goes next), and without trying to duplicate it verbatim. You'll learn what phrasings come naturally to your tongue rather than your hand, and it'll flow a lot better when you give the speech itself. ~~~ scott_s To extend your point on key features: I think of it as memorizing the overall structure of your talk. You may have a dozen or so topics you want to hit in your presentation, and that is what you end of memorizing - not on purpose, but because if you're well prepared, you can't help but _not_ memorize it. If you know that you want to hit points A, B, C, ..., in your talk, and you know your material cold, then you don't have to memorize how you want to connect A and B, B and C, etc. That is what you re-create on the spot. The practice is important because sometimes you _can't_ connect two points on-the- fly. Practicing your talk at least once will reveal those places, and you can either: figure out what the connecting bits are, or decide you don't want to cover that. In addition to the jokes and wry remarks, I find that I also tend to replay the same body language in talks that I did in practice. ~~~ mindcrime I've given more than a few public talks, and I ran for Lieutenant Governor of NC a few years ago, and did some campaign speeches as part of that... what I have found is that they key is to be _able_ to improvise your entire talk if need be. That is, if you know the points you want to make, and a rough order you want to make them in, you can construct the talk as you go if need be. Then you never have to worry about "forgetting your lines" or whatever. If you can develop this ability to give a speech totally unscripted, you can then choose whether or not you want to use notes or whatever to help you stick more precisely to the plan... but in the worst case, you're never totally screwed with no ability to proceed. FWIW, when I ran for office, I never memorized a single speech, nor did I use notes. I mentally rehearsed the key points and structure on the way to the venue, and then improvised. Take the fact that I didn't get elected however you want, vis-a-vis the effectiveness of my approach. :-) ------ silverbax88 It's tougher to be a solid public speaker than it looks. I've given talks to big rooms, gyms and moderately sized conference rooms. I rarely get nervous but occasionally it hits us all. I do have some notes on watching great speakers in person and learning from my own mistakes. 1\. Do NOT ask for a 'show of hands' from the audience. Even some practiced speakers do this. They think that it engages the audience, but it is a crutch, an attempt to turn the focus away from the speaker onto the audience. It's always clumsy and delays the audience from hearing the content. Some speakers claim that they want to know more about the audience before they proceed. We all know that's not true. Are you really going to completely modify your speech, dropping that five minutes of solid material just because not enough hands were raised when you asked about it? Of course not. 2\. Note cards are not 'bad'. I had to learn this one the hard way. If you are professional orator, you will eventually get to the point where you can pontificate the same speech verbatim without a single note. But for the rest of us, a note card of bullet-point topics can keep us on track. Just don't have a ream of pages and stare down at them, reading monotonously without looking up. 3\. Everyone hits that middle 'death valley' at some point. It's the point of a talk where you are very aware of your own voice, and you aren't getting any perceived feedback from the audience. This is the hard slog where you have to know that while time has slowed to a crawl for you, it hasn't changed for the audience. Remember how you feel when the situation is reversed - how often have you ever seen a speaker so bad that you actually noticed it and remembered it? Not often, if ever. Boring speakers are forgotten - bad speakers are ignored - great speakers MIGHT be remembered. So just keep going, and the worst that could happen is that you are boring, which no one will remember anyway. ~~~ crazygringo > _Do NOT ask for a 'show of hands' from the audience._ I completely disagree. If you ask people to raise their hands 10 times on inane questions, then of course it's useless. But correctly used, it: 1) Wakes people up and gets everyone in the room focused 2) Gets people aware of the rest of the audience, and "on the same page" 3) Ideally provides a natural segue into how the point of the lecture directly connects to _you_ I taught English for years, which was basically public speaking every single day, and getting my students to tie an aspect of the theme/question of the day into their lives, and respond, in the first couple minutes was always _key_ in terms of getting them all on the same page and relating to the material in the rest of the class. It would only occasionally be a show of hands, there are hundreds of other techniques as well (shouting words, asking the nearest person a question, writing a word on a piece of paper, etc.), but these are all _fantastic_ public-speaking techniques. Of course, you need to have the personality to pull them all off, so the audience trusts you and wants to go along, but you can develop that. Indeed, I think it's a real shame most public speakers don't interact _more_ with the audience through these kinds of things. They boost attention levels and retention levels so much more. ~~~ scott_s While I defended the practice below, I consider teaching to be a special case of public speaking. I have "presentation mode" and "lecture mode." There is a lot of overlap, but they're not exactly the same. In presentation mode, I will not stop everything and wait for someone to answer a question. When I'm presenting, I don't expect people to understand everything that I'm saying to the point that they can apply this new knowledge. I would _like_ that, sure, but I think it's presumptuous to assume they would like it as well. Presentations are also often made to peers, and I don't like quizzing my peers in such a way. In lecture mode, that's the entire purpose of my presentation, so I do it. I have no problem quizzing students in such a way - because if they can't answer the question, then I should change the focus of the lecture to make sure that everyone can before I move on. Note that I am differentiating between quizzing and polling. I'll poll in both lecture and presentation mode. ------ ctdonath My breakthrough in being comfortable with public speaking came from a quote: _"...though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does make the reassuring claim that where it is inaccurate, it is at least _definitively_ inaccurate."_ \- Douglas Adams If I am to make a mistake while presenting, then by gum I'm going to make that mistake with the most confidence and gusto I can muster. I will own up to being wrong, I will turn that into a "teaching moment" for the audience, I will plow forward confident in the spirit of Kipling's "If" knowing that while I may have screwed up I did so in a good-faith effort at taking the lead and making things happen for an audience that chose to follow. If I am wrong, then I shall be _definitively_ wrong! That's pretty good for an awkward introvert. ~~~ danso Not only can you get away with mistakes by moving past them with gusto, but your entire speech can be a mistake if you pull it off with confidence. The Dr. Fox effect: > _Forty years ago, a singularly interesting lecture was held at the > University of Southern California School of Medicine. The subject was > "Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education." The speaker > was Dr. Myron L. Fox from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a pupil of > von Neumann and an authority on the application of mathematics to human > behavior._ > _The attendees were psychiatrists and psychologists (MDs and PhDs) who were > gathered for a training conference. They listened to the lecturer with great > interest, asked many questions and were satisfied with speaker's replies._ > _They gave him flying grades in the satisfaction questionnaire. Nobody > suspected anything wrong. In reality the speaker was an actor and knew > nothing on the subject of his lecture._ [http://www.significancemagazine.org/details/webexclusive/123...](http://www.significancemagazine.org/details/webexclusive/1237447/PhDs- couldnt-tell-an-actor-from-a-renowned-scientist.html) [http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r30034/PSY4180/Pages/Naftulin.ht...](http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r30034/PSY4180/Pages/Naftulin.html) ~~~ CurtMonash That was the secret of Ronald Reagan's political success. ------ filmgirlcw I like this a lot. I'll add a few of my own points too (though I think Zach's are great): 1\. Practice, practice, practice. Now, I'm a hypocrite for saying this because I do tons of speaking engagements with little or no practice (which is a combination of hubris and the fact that I'm often pegged to do stuff at the last minute). Still, if you aren't comfortable speaking off the cuff or in front of a crowd, practice makes perfect. Something I've often done is to do screen recordings like Zach says -- but instead of doing them of the talk live, I do them before the presentation. The advantage here is that I can practice what I want to say, listen back to my cadence and then adjust and readjust if necessary. By the third or fourth time, I'm usually golden and I have a great master copy that I can try to mimic live on stage. 2\. The better you get. -- This is true of almost anything, but it's especially true of speaking in public. You'll become more comfortable and natural on stage (or on camera) and have a much better sense of how to steer a talk, how to keep your energy up and how to come across as assured. 3\. Record yourself in advance. For beginning public speakers, it's important that you record what you sound like so that you can adjust your speed (slow down or speed up) and cadence. It can be odd to hear yourself speak at first, but once you get used to it, you can adjust what you look and sound like. This is especially important if you are doing any media appearances. 4\. Watch Yourself After -- If your speech or conference is being recorded (or if you are recording yourself) -- watch it back after. Again, it can be disconcerting but it's a great time to learn how you can improve next time. It's also a great way to see how you progress over time. If I look at my first CNN appearance in April of 2011 and my most recent appearance, it's like night and day. That helps me when I get up to present at an event, keynote a conference or do another media appearance. ~~~ dacilselig Recording yourself is extremely important. Although it may be awkward to look at yourself stumble through a speech, you will get good understanding of how you are presenting yourself. I'd even go as far as trying different clothing and see how each changes the image your reflecting. As I use to co-host a radio show, I found that listening to yourself live is the best way to ensure a high quality show. It makes sure you don't speak too slow,fast, if there's an echo etc. ------ dctoedt Legendary senior partner at a law-firm sandwich seminar: "The most important thing about public speaking is to say it with _confidence_!" Young associate (me), raising hand: "But what if you really _aren't_ confident?" Senior partner, fiercely: _"FAKE it!"_ ~~~ gruseom Totally off-topic but: I wish you'd comment more often here. ~~~ dctoedt I'm flattered! (Ditto to Thomas.) I do lurk here a lot. ------ molbioguy "Talks should always be reactionary rather than anticipatory: they’re going to come off as more natural, more interesting, and above all, more valuable." I agree with the sentiment here. My presentations are all about science and bioinformatics, and I find they go best when I have a story to tell. The audience loves to hear stories, especially when they can experience the aha! moment themselves before I get to the end of the story. It's a much better story if the project is almost complete rather than mostly unfinished. As a minor aside, being a grumpy old guy, I would suggest that rather than "reactionary" (which means something altogether different than what I understood Zach to be saying), the proper term might be "retrospective" and paired with "prospective". I misused "reactionary" myself in younger days and still cringe when I think about it. Strange word indeed. ------ abarringer For those that do much public speaking there's an interesting article on rhetoric here [http://www.european-rhetoric.com/rhetoric-101/modes- persuasi...](http://www.european-rhetoric.com/rhetoric-101/modes-persuasion- aristotle/) In a nutshell For communicating a message Pathos(emotive "Be Excited") is more important then logos(the words). Ethos(Ethics, character) is more important then Pathos. Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. -Aristotle 1356a 2,3 ------ postwait "Talks should always be reactionary rather than anticipatory: they’re going to come off as more natural, more interesting, and above all, more valuable." I think that's not true at all. There is room for both. I would say do not mix them. Talks can either share what's been done or share what can be from a visionary perspective. ~~~ holman Admittedly I slipped an "always" in there when I shouldn't have; I agree that anticipatory talks can be great, too. Let's put it this way, though: for a beginning or first-time speaker, I'll maintain that talks should be reactionary. There are more than enough other things to worry about going into your first talk that it's really comforting to talk about your past experiences than try to prepare a new project or a "what-if" for an arbitrary conference date. That's more the target market I meant with that (admittedly broad) statement. ~~~ follower I would recommend you seriously consider re-wording the "reactionary rather than anticipatory" sentence on your blog. (The number of confused/questioning comments here on HN about the use of those terms suggests I'm not the only one. :) ) The sentence in your post above explains your intention much more clearly: "There are more than enough other things to worry about going into your first talk that it's really comforting to talk about your past experiences than try to prepare a new project or a 'what-if' for an arbitrary conference date." As I understand it, what you're wanting to convey is that it's better to choose a topic where you can talk about "what I've done" rather than "what I hope to do". The "reactionary"/"anticipatory" terms don't clearly convey that intention and seem to me to be incorrect terms to use. (I don't have a specific suggestion for replacement terms--"retrospective" is one option but has a slightly negative connotation.) Aside from that, thanks for sharing your experiences. :) ------ apitaru Great post. I used to often speak publicly. Last week I gave my first talk in years, to a large crowd. I was nervous because of how long has passed since I've last done it, but then I remembered my old habit. Before my talks I used to spend time with the conference goers in the hall, just chatting with them about whatever comes up. This seems to play a trick on the mind, making me feel like I'm speaking to friends rather than a faceless crowd. It worked last week as well. I highly recommend trying it out. ~~~ pacaro I love it, I have no problems presenting to people I know - however vaguely - but a room full of strangers fills me with cold dread. ------ philmcc I would give serious consideration to taking an Improv Comedy class. If you can't, I'd like to share the concept of "Yes, and--" Invariably something will go wrong during one of your presentations. A slide will look funny. There will be a weird noise from outside. An audience member will say something strange. The idea behind "Yes,and-ing" in improv is basically you treat every single thing as if it were planned and part of what you were doing, rather than negating it or ignoring it, which is dishonest and creates a disconnect. I've given three presentations in my life (all this year) and each time something went wrong I ran with it and the audience responded very positively. My slide about "Internal Leaks" was missing the first two letters. Second time public speaking. Crap. Instead of negating ("Oh this was supposed to say Internal"), I Yes-And'ed. "Up next, a very important problem, Ternal Leaks." And I then verbally chopped off the first two letters of the next slides (verbally), my name, my company name, and closed with "Anks, I hope you enjoyed it." (Yes, it's a little corny, but it breaks the wall between audience and speaker. I find, in life, if you make someone really laugh, even if it's just once, everything else works out.) ------ pgrote Be excited about what you're presenting is key. You have to engage people through your excitement and by cuing off what they react to. Many times I find myself including the audience feedback into the presentation in terms of spending time on certain points that get the most reaction. The author is dead on about the questions, though they don't have to be after the presentation is over. ------ kingkilr I had a laptop hard lock in the middle of a talk once. That was fun. For the record, I handled it by immediately swapping out my laptop for the session runner's (can't risk it happening 2x during the talk), my slides were online and I just re-downloaded them and tried to go forward losing as little time as possible. ------ bajsejohannes An obvious thing that took me a little too many talks to figure out, is to say "Thanks" when you're done. The audience wants to applaude, but the speaker has to initiate it. It always gets weird if the speaker goes to Q&A without it. Do we clap now? Later? ------ Shoomz This blog has a ton underlying something I think of each time I go into a large presentation - be a rock star! I realize that's oversimplifying it a bit, but if you think about presenting there are many items that do coincide: know your material in and out, think about your audience, bring the enthusiasm...etc. I realize not every presentation is going to be rock star material, but if nothing else it makes me strive to elevate what I am discussing and has given me something more to strive for whenever delivering material to a larger audience. ~~~ davidw ... and if you feel you're losing people's attention, biting the head off a live bat is a way to get it right back! Try that next time people are nodding off while you drone on about cloud architecture. ------ scott_s A presentation is a performance. When you are on stage, you are _on stage_. ------ swdunlop "Most conferences are a crap shoot when it comes to video. Half the time they won’t record your talk, and the other half of the time it may take months before your talk is published. Something I’ve been doing recently is making a screen recording of my talks using QuickTime on my Mac." This is really true, and really good advice. Organizers have a lot on their hands leading up to a conference, and, after, getting recordings posted languishes until they manage to recover enough of their personal lives to start ramping up for the next. I've had several instances where I've given a talk, been very happy with the response, and then realized that I had no way to share it with a wider audience except trundling off to the next conference. Next time, I'm making my peace with a screen recording app. ------ jberryman I've always been bad at speaking (all my experiences were in school, so far... Not really "public"). But my one really good presentation happened in college. I'd stayed up pretty late the night before finishing the thing along with a handout we were required to give to the class (also my notes), which I was going to print off in the library before class. Went to bed and next thing I knew my alarm was buzzing and class had just started. I had time to throw on pants, jog to class and immediately start talking about the French horn; no notes or props. I didn't have time to be nervous or worry, and was just genuinely engaged in the topic and it went great. ------ WalterBright I find that engaging the audience into a back-and-forth has been very successful for me, and I get more positive feedback on the talks afterwards, too. ------ stretchwithme Exceptional advance. Thanks. I would add that one should not try to get excited about a topic that does not excite you. Authenticity is important. Rather, give talks about topics that you are excited about. ------ qdpb The title is a little misleading: they do tell you all these things and more if you don't rely on blog posts that will unavoidably focus on a couple of things and go for a good book. ------ oblique63 Yesterday's episode of "Back to Work" went over public speaking and confidence as well -- it's definitely worth a listen: <http://5by5.tv/b2w/72> ~~~ benatkin It may have been worth a listen for you, but I think YMMV applies very strongly to podcasts. ~~~ oblique63 in general, I'd agree, but if you're interested in the subject matter of the article here, the podcast does cover some good tid bits about public speaking. I guess I should have mentioned that the real meat of this show doesn't usually kick in until about 30% of the way through (which I could understand might annoy some people)... ------ ckaustin best public speaking advice that has made me a 10x better presenter: "a presentation is about the audience, not about you." ------ nerdfiles Steven Wright's stage presence should be a github repo. ------ mjwalshe mm Nothing at all about the art of rhetoric and how to do public speaking well though you could try watching [http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-art-of- rhet...](http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-art-of-rhetoric)

The Apple Watch - benigeri http://www.apple.com/watch/apple-watch/ ====== chipotle_coyote While someone else already made the reference to this quote, it's hard for me not to recall Commander Taco's (in)famous dismissal of the original iPod when I browse these comments. Personally I don't know that there's _any_ watch that would really get me to start wearing watches at all again -- I never liked them that much to begin with. But this knocks down an awful lot of the criticisms I've had of existing smartwatches. The smaller Apple Watch is 38mm, certainly not small but by no means an irrationally huge behemoth. (Even the larger is only 42mm, I believe.) When you consider the three lines, two sizes, and multiple bands, there's dozens of combinations available. You may personally not like the fashion sense, but other than the Moto 360 this is the first smartwatch that's had a fashion sense to criticize. (And guys, the Moto 360 is 46mm, so let's not pretend it's svelte, either.) But what's really interesting to me is that Apple has clearly put a _lot_ more thought into how interactions on a device like this should work than anybody else. Yes, I'm sure every single component has an antecedent you can point to, just like the iPhone's interaction model. Except that nobody put it all together like that before the iPhone. And nobody put it all together like _this_ before the Apple Watch. I'm not so glib as to say that catcalls when Apple introduces a new product are a sure sign of success (I remember the iPod Hifi, thanks). But again, it's hard not to see a few recurring patterns in the responses: oh, look, it doesn't do everything that it could (or that competitors already do!) and it's too expensive. If it sells well, it'll only because of the Apple faithful buying everything. And, of course, if it sells well, than within a year all smartwatches will adapt its interaction model. Other manufacturers will come out with variants that Apple isn't making, and we can move onto the evergreen phase of dismissing Apple as a company that just copies everybody else. ~~~ personZ _it 's hard for me not to recall Commander Taco's (in)famous dismissal of the original iPod when I browse these comments_ You should also remember that he was hardly in the majority with those comments. Further he was _technically_ correct, and the iPod succeeded because of a synergy with other parts of Apple's empire (notably iTunes). _But what 's really interesting to me is that Apple has clearly put a lot more thought into how interactions on a device like this should work than anybody else._ How so? Google put, it seems, enormous thought and effort into Android Wear. It is a whole interaction and ecosystem built specifically for smart watches. Because Tim Cook gives some trite speech about not using a smartphone OS on a watch (this was, it is worth noting, not long after celebrating how xcode now supports dynamic layouts...you know, the thing that Android did a half a decade ago, and was widely deridden as "running smartphone apps on a tablet")? You've tried to cover every possible Apple defense, so you seem pretty committed, but you have to understand that a lot of people are derisive because we've been hearing the Apple faithful railing about these same attributes of competitor devices for months. Announcing before availability, large and bulky, needs to be tethered to a device, _square_ , and so on...I have to imagine all of those once liabilities will suddenly turn into strengths. I love my Apple products, but there is absolutely no doubt that there is a distortion field, and it really is hard to stomach. ~~~ chipotle_coyote Yes, there kind of is a distortion field, but I'd argue it's with notions like "Apple has never announced a major product months before availability" and "nobody has ever made a large square watch." Both of these are trivially demonstrated false. And I'm sure Google has put thought and effort into Android Wear, but what you dismiss as a "trite speech from Tim Cook" looks to me like a stake in the ground. Google says you can shrink smartphone UX to a smartwatch; Apple says you shouldn't, and you should do these other things instead. This informs a whole lot of things about the way the UX works. The Apple Watch's relationship to the Moto 360 looks to me less like the iPhone 6's relationship to the Moto X than like the original iPhone's relationship to other high-end smartphones of 2007: obviously a lot of shared DNA, but trying to address the same problem space in a measurably different way. Yes, Android had dynamic layout before iOS. And? Qt had it before everyone. As a general rule, everything everyone ever gets enthusiastic about can be safely dismissed as having first appeared in a Nokia product that all 27 Finns who bought it are still fanatical about. Also, it was probably implemented in Lisp. ~~~ ibrahima > Google says you can shrink smartphone UX to a smartwatch; Apple says you > shouldn't, and you should do these other things instead. The fact that you believe what Apple says about Google rather than taking the two minutes to actually look at how Android Wear works and see that that statement is completely false shows that the distortion field is in full effect. ~~~ beedogs I mean, this is the same company that, during the keynote today, repeated the lie that they're the mob that brought us the computer mouse. People just accept Apple's misstatements and half-truths and outright lies as fact now. ~~~ danellis Did they actually say that? What's the exact quote? I thought they said something about all their products using innovative interfaces, not that the innovations were theirs. Still, when they were talking about the digital crown, they did make it sound like they were trying to claim they invented the optical rotary encoder. ~~~ makr "Macintosh introduced the mouse." from the official liveblog: [http://www.apple.com/live/2014-sept- event/2cd7d38c-f769-4fc4...](http://www.apple.com/live/2014-sept- event/2cd7d38c-f769-4fc4-918e-5bba170f381c/) ~~~ danellis "Introduced" is a subjective word. The Alto had a mouse, but I don't think it was used outside PARC. It doesn't seem too far from the truth to say that the Macintosh introduced the mouse to the world. ------ antr My two cents: I don't know any person who is into serious running (I'm into triathlon, so add cycling and swimming) who would spend $350 on the Apple Watch and additionally you are required to have your iPhone with you to use the GPS. A sports watch without GPS, IMHO is a no go at $350. For <$300 I can get GPS, HR, ANT+, waterproof* and +20h battery life. e.g. Garmin Forerunner 910xt. (I won't comment on the lack of info on battery life and water resistance). *Edit: changed from water resistant to waterproof. ~~~ bobochan Exactly. I put off buying a GPS watch because I wanted to see what Apple was going to offer. Answer: Nothing. I really cannot imagine a more useless product than this watch. It requires an iPhone and seems to essentially serve as a small, remote interface for your phone. And how do I navigate that small interface? With an even smaller "digital crown." I hate trying to set the time on my watch, and now they expect me to interact with something more complicated using a tiny, rotating nub? Imagine a typical scenario. You are walking down the street and suddenly need to navigate somewhere. How many minutes are you going to waste playing with that little nub and resizing things on the screen before finally pulling out your phone and just using that. The only argument for this watch is that it might be helpful for those times when pulling out your phone is just too onerous. I regret that I do not have the type of lifestyle where that is a serious limitation. ~~~ lhnz Whether this will be useful all rests on the quality and differentiation of the haptic feedback. For example, imagine walking down the street towards your destination and feeling the right side of the watch vibrate to signal that you should turn right. If your watch can communicate contextual information related to your intention and local then it will be superior to (1) wearing a socially inappropriate device like the Google Glass, (2) being called out to by a device, (3) fumbling in your phone in order to then open the correct app. Apps that correctly use haptic feedback should be able to silently and subtly give users superpowers without forcing them to clumsily interact with a product. I actually wrote about the benefits of this back in 2012 [0], though I was talking about phones and notification fatigue back then (and not leveraging Future Interface style stuff.) [0] [http://sebinsua.com/your-thigh-as-an-interface-from-your- pho...](http://sebinsua.com/your-thigh-as-an-interface-from-your-phone-to- your-mind) ~~~ tolmasky The overriding feeling I had during this keynote is that every feature that I found cool in the watch I would much prefer on my phone. Cool watch app? Wait, actually that would be cooler and more usable on a big screen... Haptic feedback? Agreed, awesome idea, but no reason it can't be on my phone and buzz my leg instead of my wrist. ~~~ jlebar > Haptic feedback? Agreed, awesome idea, but no reason it can't be on my phone > and buzz my leg instead of my wrist. It's frequently lost upon this crowd (I'm guilty of this myself) that half of the population in the West frequently wears clothes which lack pockets. ~~~ ChristianBundy Your statistic confused me until I realized you were [assumedly] referencing females who keep their phones in their purses/bags. ~~~ hayleyanthony Please try to say women, not "females." I don't think you meant anything by it but when you always see that usage, (common in tech spaces) it starts to feel a little dehumanizing. ~~~ wmeredith Oh lord, get over it. Female is degrading now? ~~~ yusefnapora Well, it does make you sound like a Ferengi. ~~~ wmeredith What's a Ferengi? Edit: Nevermind. I Googled it. Star Trek alien. ------ wlesieutre "Maybe if we don't mention lefties, everyone will forget they exist" Righty watches aren't a big deal for us to use because you only use the crown to set them, and you only set them twice a year. On the Apple Watch, you're going to use it all the time. It's not even that I couldn't use my right hand, it's that I don't want a bulky $350 gadget permanently strapped to my left hand, which I frequently use for doing things. Great recipe for (best case) being irritating, or (worst case) getting smashed into stuff. Maybe it can be rotated 180° to go on a right arm? It'd mean the button and crown positions are backward, but it'd be better than nothing. I see no mention of that option anywhere, so for now I assume you can't. Either way, doesn't support the 4S, costs more than I'm willing to spend, and will hopefully get thinner in future releases. I'll jump on the smartwatch train eventually, but not with this one. ~~~ grumblestumble I don't see why the face wouldn't be reversible - it detaches completely from the strap, and it's not like the software UI is going to be upside down - your phone can already handle that. The only difference will be that the crown is below the button. ~~~ wlesieutre Agreed, it just seems like something that Apple ought to mention. Can't find it anywhere on their website. And orientation changing makes sense for a phone feature because people switch between portrait and landscape, while this is a permanent setting that 90% of people would never touch. It'd be a giant oversight for Apple though, and I'd be surprised if nobody on their design team is left handed. ~~~ yaeger Yes, I would have also thought that since this was a presentation to the general consumer and not just a tech demo ala WWDC where these things don't matter yet, that they would have addressed this issue by showing a person taking the watch from one wrist and putting it on the other and thus showing the device can be turned around and used just like before. ------ georgemcbay Who would have thunk that of all the end-of-2014 smartwatches, the one that would make you look the least like a dork would be the one from Motorola? Shame about the battery life, though. Please fix that Motorola, I want to give you my money so bad, but cannot do it until you fix the battery life. ~~~ taude You know, I was thinking the same thing. I think I prefer the roundness of the 360, than the rectangular Apple design. However, you won't catch me wearing either of them until you don't have to have a phone with you. I'm thinking Minimum Viable Phone (or communications device) that I can wear on my wrist when doing thing, and have some casual interactions with text messaging, and glancing at emails)... ~~~ masklinn > I'm thinking Minimum Viable Phone (or communications device) that I can wear > on my wrist when doing thing, and have some casual interactions with text > messaging, and glancing at emails)... The problem's these require extensive radio interaction/SoC, without a phone support (which can stream the information via bluetooth LE) you have to carry that in the watch itself. ~~~ taude Yeup. So wake me when this becomes a reality: I'm sure somone's patenting building a cellular antenna into a watch band as I type this. Plus, I'm sure 6G networks will be faster and require even less power.... ~~~ masklinn The antenna is not the problem, the radio chips (and power) are. ~~~ alwaysdoit Specifically, you need enough power to regularly transmit an electromagnetic signal on the order of miles that scales with the inverse square law. Considering that they can't even get the battery life up without that requirement, it might be a while unless we make significant scientific breakthroughs in battery or wireless technology. ~~~ andor _Considering that they can 't even get the battery life up without that requirement, it might be a while unless we make significant scientific breakthroughs in battery or wireless technology._ "Both the Samsung Gear S and the Gear Circle will be available in global markets in phases through Samsung’s retail channels, e-commerce websites and via carriers beginning October." ~~~ alwaysdoit Gear Circle requires a smartphone for connectivity. I'm interested to see what kind of battery life the Gear S is able to get with a 300mAh battery. ------ rebel Am I the only one who thinks the available/previewed watch faces don't match the intended goal of the device? This event was all about fashion, inviting all of the fashion journalists and talking about personalization. Not a single one of those watch faces look appealing, and worst off they do nothing to shake off the "geeky" stigma attached to smart watches. I think the design has potential when it gets a little bit thinner (v2?), but the previewed watch faces look absolutely awful to me. You'd think that would be the easiest part of building a super computer that fit on your wrist. ~~~ TeMPOraL > _and worst off they do nothing to shake off the "geeky" stigma attached to > smart watches._ I disagree with you on this. For me, this smartwatch, like all the other recent ones, is _everything but geeky_. They look like they're designed for everyone except the techies (they probably are). I for one would love a smartwatch that gives the vibe of advanced, "hackery" technology. ~~~ silentscope > is everything but geeky I'm a nerd, and I'm sorry to be crude but NERD ALERT. A smart watch today starts at Geeky and works, laboring and awkwardly, towards generally acceptable. If you think a smart watch by any manufacturer, at this early point, is everything but geeky you gotta get out of the office. ------ zmmmmm My biggest take away is that Apple has failed to advance the state of the art in any meaningful way here. I guess hype is always hype, but people really expected that Apple would do something that would knock this out of the park - a week long battery life, a flexible watch face, or a bracelet style 360 degree screen or something else that would just reset the whole space. It didn't happen. This device may sell well (or not) but it's basically a peer to the current entrants in this space, not a generation ahead like many people expected. ~~~ jamesrom It's exactly one generation ahead. ~~~ markild How so? Genuine answer. I fail to see what this offers that the other products in this space doesn't have. At least hardware-wise. ~~~ idlewords A set of new UI primitives and the hardware to support them (crown thingy, tactile feedback chip). ~~~ vadman I have doubts about the crown thingy -- turning a watch crown while the thing is on your wrist is quite uncomfortable. I understand it's a big crown, but still doesn't seem ergonomic to me. ------ fidotron This is an intriguing situation because while the "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame." comment will always haunt those that criticise Apple product launches this is the first one in years where the product looks more like it's actually the Nomad being mentioned, and the iPod has yet to arrive. I'm going so far as to say that smartwatches and VR represent the desperate flailing of a tech industry that's run out of ideas that will connect with people. We had a good boom post iPhone, but this kind of thing just doesn't look like there's any point to it. ~~~ MrScruff In my opinion you're utterly wrong about VR, it's going to be a transformative technology and will precipitate a massive push for high end real-time graphics. People want new experiences without leaving their sofa and VR will bring that in spades. As far as the watch goes, I think it will make money but less than the iPad. It's clearly pitched as a fashion accessory and will find a market. Just not a big enough one to satisfy analysts. ~~~ deong > People want new experiences without leaving their sofa and VR will bring > that in spades. It's far from clear that they're actually willing to do anything about it. Look at 3D TVs. No one wants to sit on their couch lazily watching whatever's on with special glasses. If VR was a passive technology like HD -- by which I mean you buy a new TV and everything is better without any further action on your part -- I'd be more confident that you're correct. But it's not. I can't see headsets as a thing people are going to wear sitting on their sofa with the family. Game consoles seem like an obvious target with an audience that might be receptive, but otherwise, I just can't envision mass adoption. ~~~ MrScruff I don't argue that it would be an easier sell if it wasn't so anti-social to use. But it certainly can't be compared to 3D TVs or movies for that matter, which are an awful hack. This generation's VR is the real deal, and while the technology isn't quite there yet, it's within touching distance. People will be prepared to put up with the inconvenience because the experience will be significantly more compelling than anything else they've seen. It will be massive based on word of mouth alone. ~~~ deong I think that very much depends on perspective. The technology powering a current-gen headset might be brilliant, but the headset itself -- not the technology but the very idea that I need a headset is still very much an "awful hack". At least to me, and I suspect quite a few others. I could be wrong of course...just my predictions there, but that's my problem with the tech. ~~~ MrScruff I guess what I'm saying is that if the experience is 10x more compelling (which is what I think it will be), then people will put up with it. Putting on skis and getting to the top of a mountain is inconvienent but people still do it. ~~~ deong Some people ski, occasionally. I can totally see that future for VR as well, and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. For gaming, it's at least potentially very compelling. I just don't see it as a technology people want for more general use. I don't think we'll be using it browsing Facebook or sitting in the park. People don't wear skis around in their daily life. Skis are very much a special purpose item that most people use between never and about once a year, with never the runaway winner, if you consider the fraction of even relatively affluent people who don't ski at all. ~~~ MrScruff I think you're taking the ski thing a little literally. I'm using it as an example of how people will do something quite arduous, expensive and dangerous because it gives them a unique experience. Obviously the 'overhead' of putting on a VR headset is massively less than that of skiing. If you think of VR as being a new screen technology, I can see why you might come to the conclusion you have. But true VR (where you have 'presence') goes far, far beyond that. I agree it's not going to be a general purpose platform like the smartphone, but I think it will still be high impact. Do I think people will be browsing Facebook with VR? Probably not. The challenge for Facebook will be to create an environment based on their content that you would want to visit. ~~~ deong I didn't really intend that to be literal. I'm going with the "skiing as a metaphor" here. Yes, people will do something arduous and inconvenient for the experience, but they do it rarely. The inconvenience is tolerable when you do it every once in a while to get a unique experience. The same level of inconvenience is not at all tolerable as part of your day to day life. If the argument is that VR will become "an experience", then I'm fine with that. But a capital-E-Experience is the opposite of everyday mass adoption. ------ wiremine I spent about 20 minutes reading through some of the now 650+ comments, and I'm a bit surprised how common the arguments are on both sides. It feels like the entire tech community has the same basic argument every time a new 1.0 apple product is released: Those who don't like the product: \- it is feature incomplete \- the hype doesn't match the actual product \- it doesn't actually look that great \- there are other, better products already on the market \- it is overpriced \- one or two interesting feature doesn't equate to "innovation" And those who like the product (or love Apple) tend to have counter-points for each argument. I'm curious if anyone has compiled a list of day zero critiques over the years for Apple successes (Mac, iPod, iPhone) or failures (Mac toaster, hifi, etc.)? It would be fun (and maybe a bit informative) for the community to review. Edit: fixed spacing and wording. ~~~ gaoshan I think you are spot on with this comment. The reaction to this watch is not substantially different from every other reaction to a major Apple product (or OS version or whatever else they announce). It can be entertaining to read (got me interested in the Garmin Forerunner that was mentioned) but it's just people at a bar chatting about the topic of the day. ------ leoc Two small things: * The product pages for the individual Watch lines, especially [http://www.apple.com/watch/apple-watch-sport/](http://www.apple.com/watch/apple-watch-sport/) , are the first time I can recall Apple using sex or (literal) sexiness in its advertising. (We'll pass over the "Rip. Mix. Burn." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ECN4ZE9-Mo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ECN4ZE9-Mo) cringefest ...) * I await Gruber's reaction with considerable interest... ~~~ eslaught Regarding your first point, see: [http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2011/08/advertising-and- fut...](http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2011/08/advertising-and-future-of- apple.html) ~~~ leonroy Don’t necessarily agree with everything in that article but it's remarkably prescient. ------ phirschybar To those who are concerned about mainstream adoption of a watch like this, I remind you of the Pebble Kickstarter which was one of the most successful in Kickstarter history. And all those contributors had no guarantee that the Pebble would see the light of day. There is serious demand for a watch that does even what the Pebble originally promised, which is still far far less than what the Apple Watch has now proposed to do. I have been a Pebble watch owner for over a year, after having given up wearing watches around the time I owned my first cellphone. I have come to feel the same NEED of having my Pebble on as I, and everybody else, has with their phone in their pocket. All of the quirks of the Pebble and everything that I have come to realize is missing with the Pebble, is addressed elegantly with the Apple Watch. 'Canned' and voice responses to messages... Huge. A non- obvious alternative to the classic vibration (which is obvious to people nearby when using the Pebble) in the 'tap' technology... also clever and smart. ~~~ shrikant Just fyi (happy Pebble owner since the Kickstarter), Pebble Glance now gives you the ability for canned responses to texts straight from the watch. ------ julianpye The main innovation I like is NFC in the Watch. This makes so much sense. What is the big advantage of pulling a phone from your bag instead of a wallet? Paying with a wrist, opening doors with your wrist, entering the metro with your wrist. Can't wait for the next Wear releases from Samsung to have it integrated :) ~~~ crwll Sony Smartwatch 3 has NFC (and GPS). Too bad it's rather ugly. AFAIK, it only currently uses NFC for pairing to a phone, but the hardware is there and Android Wear will hopefully soon include complete support for it, like they recently did with watch GPS support. ~~~ julianpye Unfortunately it is only a passive tag for pairing. You can't to do anything else with it, so it cannot read other tags itself. ------ 3pt14159 Super disappointed with this. I was hoping for a bunch of sensors that fed my iPhone. Not something to discretely take meetings during a meeting. Here is what is missing for me: 1\. Sweat sensor. 2\. Insulin sensor. 3\. Smarter/more accelerometers to intelligently _automatically_ detect what I'm doing. For example, if I start lifting 50 lbs in a dumbell bench press it should __know __that! My iPhone should auto update a fitness tracking app. If I start biking my normal "track" here in Toronto, it should automatically know that! So underwhelmed here. 4\. No mention of emergency assistance "stuff", (like detection of heart attacks, or spiking insulin levels). 5\. Some really stupid / weird features, although I do kinda like the shared heartbeat one. Would be fun on exercises / first date makeouts :) ~~~ unclebunkers >> For example, if I start lifting 50 lbs in a dumbell bench press it should know that! Exactly how do you propose this would work? You are disappointed by diabetic specific monitors, the lack of an app that I'm sure someone will create someday, and something that physics will likely never be able to solve. I think it's safe to say that your expectations started in the realm of fantasy. Innovation can't ignore reality. ~~~ 3pt14159 There are already devices that have proved this concept in production (and waiting FDA approval) or on the market. ~~~ unclebunkers Could you provide a link? I feel I'd have heard if any physics defying devices exist. ------ arihant Here are my first thoughts (I kind of won't be doing device specific nitpicking as this is the first iteration. We are sure the concept will evolve with time): Good things: 1.) The Tap-talk feature is an absolute genius for me. This, exactly this, is the perfect non-intrusive yet hyper connected way to intimately stay in touch with someone. Just tap on their wrist, so simple. Make a little scribble to show emotion, so beautiful. 2.) The digital crown seems very interesting. I know the concerns on this thread, but if you see the demo again, the nob is bigger and is fluid enough to rotate by rolling just one finger on it. We hate crowns on our watches not because we have to rotate them, but because they are hard to rotate. This one might be different. 3.) The built. It starts at $349, while Android Wear is at $250-300 range. But then this is sapphire glass with at least steel body. And their is mention of actually how a watch is accurate with time, something 3 other companies didn't do. 4.) Multiple sizes is a good thing. Small people, petite ladies don't like to wear big sizes. I like how adaptive this watch is with the sizes, materials, straps. Now on to the awkward parts: 1.) They gave developers at least 4-5 months time to implement the tap-talk on Android Wear. By the time this watch actually comes to stores, it would be beaten down concept. 2.) They gave Android Wear manufacturers all the time to step up their game. 3.) The killer app, even in on-stage demos, seems to be the maps app. The Apple maps, unfortunately. That makes it profoundly useless wrist weight for anybody living outside of handful countries it actually works in. That gives Android Wear a terrible advantage. 4.) No GPS on watch. So basically I have to carry my phone in pocket during runs. There is already GPS apps which do that. So that makes this watch essentially a display. 5.) No word on battery. 6.) Apple launched a watch today. A week earlier Moto launched a better looking watch. This is a sentence I never thought I'd say. Would I have bought it today if Apple launched it? Yes. Will I now that Apple has given me months to think it over? No. ~~~ prawn I'm surprised that the Apple Watch looks so much like a watch. I was keen to see how they might break that concept apart and create something really novel. ~~~ theon144 I'm sorry? I don't really want to sound like I'm bashing Apple, but I'd never see something round, rectangular and bulky and think "watch" up until the recent advent of smartwatches. Apple Watch is as un-watchy as any of the competing smartwatches, in my opinion. ~~~ realo Here you go... Big, rectangular bulky watch. They cost 2.5 _million_ dollars each, but have no Bluetooth... _sigh_ [http://www.independentjewellers.com/blog/2012/04/the-most- co...](http://www.independentjewellers.com/blog/2012/04/the-most-complicated- watch-in-the-world/) ------ DominikR Even though I am an Android developer, I played with the thought of buying the iPhone 6 (the big one) and an Apple Watch, because Swift is kind of a reset for developers and I am very happy with my MacBook. But now that I've seen the keynote, I've got some issues with the watch: First of all, I feel it's too expensive, because those smartwatches are basically obsolete after a year. (at least to me) It would have been good if Apple would allow those watches to be sent in and upgraded, especially for the version that uses a gold casing, which I suspect will be extremely expensive. (probably > $1000) The design of the watch is not bad, but not good either. I would have no problem wearing it, but I don't like that rectangle look. (the Moto 360 looks better to me) But on the other hand I like the navigation wheel a lot. I'm pretty sure that this alone will allow for more complex apps than what we see on Android Wear at the moment. The new types of messages that Apple presented isn't interesting to me, but I can see the younger audience using it a lot. ~~~ wil421 >First of all, I feel it's too expensive, because those smart watches are basically obsolete after a year. I felt the same way when introduced rMBP but the prices are going down. Hopefully, they will go down in the next couple years. Personally $200 would be perfect but $350 is too much especially when I can get a new iphone for less (with a subsidy from my carrier). ------ jroseattle I haven't worn a watch in at least 15 years. A good chunk of my friends and colleagues as well. I'm sure there are interesting use cases, but my summary view is this seems like a current-generation iPod with a wristband. No prediction of how successful it will be, but I kind of think this will be more niche than mainstream. ~~~ Cthulhu_ Same; for me it was mostly a practical reason though, my wrists started to hurt from computer work and the strap (metal one) was annoying against the edge of my laptop, so I had it off most of the time. Of course, if this thing proves to have added value (and just notifications isn't added value for me, I don't get them that often and if I do they're not important enough to warrant having to check them at all times), I'd consider going back to watches - pulling out your phone to check the time isn't the most convenient of actions. ------ oldmanjay i can't imagine this selling well, but i also couldn't imagine the ipad selling well and history showed i don't know what i'm talking about, so it'll probably be a huge hit. ~~~ tdicola I'm with you--I thought the iPad was dumb and happily ate crow after using one. Looking at the Apple Watch today I'm scratching my head wondering what's the point and who really wants to be even more distracted by their devices. ~~~ themoonbus I had the same reaction to the iPad as you, and now am a very happy owner. Because of this, I now withhold my opinions until I can try out products in person, although I personally could never see myself owning a smart watch. ------ agscala The watch looks very nice indeed but _starting at_ $350 is ominously steep especially since it requires an iPhone ~~~ kreutz Watches aren't subsidized and there are thousands of dumb watches that people pay well over $350 for already. ~~~ darkstar999 Those "dumb" watches will still work in 5 years. Hell, they will still be nice in 100 years. Smart watches won't hold up for 5 years. ~~~ Zikes Most "dumb" watches that cost over $350 will retain the majority of their value well past those 5 years, too. Apple's first generation watch will be ~$50 in 5 years. ~~~ happyscrappy Android gear can't sell for $50 now. ~~~ zevyoura The first Samsung Gear watch was only announced a year ago (Sep. 2013), and you can get it for <$150 new. Pretty sure it will be well under $50 for that model in 4 years. ------ psbp It may be that Google did a pretty good job of preemptively responding to the Apple Watch, but I don't find this that much more interesting than the already not very interesting Android Wear devices. ~~~ kayone > preemptively responding to the Apple Watch That's really interesting way to phrase it. if tables were turned would you say the same thing or would it be Google responding to apple or worst, Google copying apple? ~~~ nevi-me Assuming that Google hasn't spent "years" working on the Android Wear platform compared to Apple's "years", does it mean that based on what we've seen tonight vs. Wear, that Google has done better? I'm certainly of that opinion. There were a lot of speculators who should be humbled by putting the "iWatch" on a pedestal before it was even released. I personally don't like the way it looks, though Apple considered something interesting, that not everyone's wrist is huge, and made 2 versions (Android Wear OEMs can of course counter this by flooding the market with 'choice') ~~~ kayone I totally agree with you and think that google's wear is a better offering. My original reply was referring to the fact that even though Google came to market with its wear device first (years ago with glass and months ago with on the watch) it's still being called a response to apple's non existent (at the time) product. however if tables were turned and google were to release its first wear product months from now, after apple, NO ONE would call apple's watch a preemptive response to Google's wear. It would either be reported as Google copying apple or best case scenario Google's response to apple's innovation. eg. No one called the original iPhone a preemptive strike on Android. ------ ebbv The fact that this requires me to bring my iPhone on a run kills it as a sport watch. I can get a high quality GPS watch for $150 that doesn't require me to bring my iPhone. Or if I am OK with bringing my iPhone I can just use it. Dumb, dumb move on Apple's part. ~~~ k-mcgrady Sure it might not be for serious runners but about half the people I see running have a phone strapped to their arm. If they also have the watch it means they can see the display while running and get more accurate data. For those people it's not a big deal. If you're the sort of person who buys a GPS watch of course it won't be for you. When has Apple ever catered to niche markets? ~~~ ebbv Yeah, that's exactly my point. I used my iPhone 3G for 2 years of running when I first started. Why would I blow $350 on an Apple Watch to get marginal gains that a $150 GPS watch can also give AND let me ditch carrying the phone. Which, arm strap or no, is bulky and at risk of destruction. ------ mladenkovacevic It's a little thick isn't it? But it's got a design that I can see evolving over time. Not bad for a square-ish watch. Except I don't see any features that I need to plop over $350 for. In terms of health-related metrics the Basis watch is more feature-complete, and over half the price [http://www.mybasis.com/](http://www.mybasis.com/) In terms of personal assistant features, Google Now takes the lead along with any smart-watch that takes advantage of it and Android-wear. When the iPhone released, I believe the market was primed for a next- generation smartphone. I don't think this is true for wearables now. The Apple Watch will have a much touger climb than the iPhone ever did. ~~~ snowwrestler I think the value proposition for the watch will build as the sum of many parts: style + health sensor + payment token + presence token + wrist comms + apps(?). Think of it as sort of a persistent "me key" in a smart-connected world. But that world is still in its infancy, so the watch doesn't seem very valuable yet. I think it's similar to the iPad in that there is not really a built-in value proposition. The iPad's value is 100% in its apps...but when it launched, there were not a ton of iPad apps. In contrast, the iPhone was bringing a clear value prop from day one: phone calls, email, and iPod. But even then the real value prop took a long time to develop. Remember the keynote, when Jobs said "a phone... an iPod... an Internet communicator"? The first two got huge applause, the last one not so much. That term clearly confused a lot of people. But if you look at how people use their smartphones now, it is by far the biggest portion of the value of an iPhone. Both phone and iPod functionality is being eaten by Internet services (VoIP and Spotify/Pandora). ------ rwhitman I started wearing watches on a regular basis about a year ago and it has become an addictive new hobby, I'm up to 4 now and feel naked without one. The primary use-case for a wristwatch - being able to glance at your wrist to tell the time - is actually very underrated in it's usefulness. We forget that watches started out as a pocket device until the military started strapping them onto the wrist for practical purposes. When the cellphone came around we abandoned 100+ years of natural design evolution in favor of the more powerful new technology, but when that tech starts to fit comfortably in the same place that was so natural for the last century it will be a sea-change in the way we look at wireless tech... ------ na85 For me it's now official: Apple has ceded its position as an industry leader/innovator, and become a follower. This is a really, really lame product. ~~~ terhechte "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." [http://beta.slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple- releas...](http://beta.slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases- ipod) ~~~ leoc I think the analogy probably doesn't stand up: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8293961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8293961) A better analogy may be what things would have been like if Apple had kept slogging it out in the handheld-computer market between '98 and '07. ------ bhartzer Yes, you can use Apple Pay with the Apple Watch. Great addition, no more digging in my pocket for my iPhone Plus (if I can actually get it out of my pocket). ~~~ robmcm This is very usefull for those people that keep our phones in bags rather than pockets. The more I think about it it more I think this watch isn't aimed at me... ------ scj I wear a watch, but I think about it as jewelry, and incidentally as a time piece. And until there is a killer app for a watch, I will continue to do so. Originally, I posed myself the question _if_ I would wear a smartwatch if there is no such thing as a killer app. The answer is yes, but _when_ is a better question. And the partial answer isn't about it being a smartwatch or dumbwatch, but about being an uglywatch or not. I think this watch fails the uglywatch criteria. Which is an odd thought to combine with Apple. ~~~ chrissnell This Apple watch is clearly not intended for people like you and me. You won't see James Bond wearing an Apple Watch and you won't see NASA strapping them around the sleeves of space suits like an Omega Speedmaster. This is another piece of electronics that will look as dated as a CueCat or dot-matrix printer fifteen years from now. A classic timepiece, on the other hand, will retain or gain value over time. I bought my Rolex Submariner for about $6000 in 2009. Just five years later, a new Sub costs close to $9000. The value of used Rolexes is even higher. I wouldn't be surprised if my watch has doubled in value. The Apple Watch has its place: it's an alternative to a Suunto or Garmin training watch, or an everyday watch for people who wouldn't spend more than $500 on a timepiece. It's a fashion item but it's not jewelry. Like the original iPhone, its scarcity may create an initial aura of exclusivity but things will die down once you see a 14 year-old on the bus wearing one. ~~~ jawngee Rolex's are the worst investments in watch collecting. Rolex is highly susceptible to overshadowing, so even though a new one is more expensive than when you bought it, it doesn't mean your watch is worth that. It's worth even less if you didn't service it in 2013 and didn't keep the paperwork (Rolex's must be serviced every 3-4 years to maintain value). Of course, that doesn't mean you can't find someone dumb enough to unload it on for more than you paid it, but a collector isn't going to give you that value for it. The Rolex Daytona is the exception to this rule though, but Submariners are mass-produced and common for luxury watches. Source: I collect watches. ------ computerjunkie My Two Cents : I love watches, but a smart watch is just not for me. I prefer the craftsmanship it takes to create a watch that is delicately engineered to give you the exact time and makes sure the timekeeping is always accurate. This is what a watch is supposed to do, keep time. I feel smart watches are somewhat a novelty _at the moment_. There is simply too much functionality involved in smart watches, although they say its been dumbed own. When I look at my wrist, I want a quick glance of the time and a small moment to appreciate what is sitting on my wrist. The idea around of smart watches brings so many possibilities.But I don't feel they are solving actual problems. Design - Motorola is a company that is so underrated in the industry, the [0] Moto 360 was something I expected apple to release.Its actually a nice looking smart watch which seems to complement your lifestyle. Trust LG to follow suit. Square dials are just unpleasant to look at, but that's just my personal taste. Battery life is another no go for smart watches right now - What if I'm on getaway hike for the weekend where I need to check the time and a watch compass regularly? I can get a Casio G Shock for hiking trip that is solar powered for half the price. Its still early days to judge from afar. A couple of years, a couple of generations, and the prices falls down as always then maybe I'll check it out. [0] [https://moto360.motorola.com/](https://moto360.motorola.com/) ~~~ jlangenauer I'm with you. I love my iPhone, but it will be a cold day in hell before my wrist sports one of these. That said, I'm certainly interested to see where it will go - especially, as someone else said - once watchmakers start dealing in tech rather than tech- makers dealing in watches. ~~~ computerjunkie _once watchmakers start dealing in tech rather than tech-makers dealing in watches._ This couldn't have been said any better. ------ LiweiZ As the first step in watch market, Apple is in the right direction. Is this watch the ideal one we expect? Maybe not. Unlike others, they have found a path in design, but the logistics weighs more currently. So they are not able to go far at this moment. And the segment has attracted more and more competitors. It is not difficult to see they are struggling to balance the time to enter and their ability to offer an ideal product now. It's just the beginning. ------ Igglyboo really hate the curved look, bringing back memories of the 3GS. I thought we moved on to sharp corners. ~~~ laichzeit0 I'm so glad I'm not the only one on this. Really dislike the curved / beveled designs. ~~~ Igglyboo The iPhone 6 is meh but I really dislike the look of the watch. ~~~ 72deluxe It looks like a Samsung doesn't it? ------ paul_f The iPhone only seems affordable because it is tied to a 2-year contract. Otherwise it would be $800 and Apple wouldn't sell anywhere near as many as they do. At $350, I don't see how Apple Watch is going to crack the volume markets. Think 15yo girls. ~~~ gurkendoktor I am pretty sure that many contracts will throw in a watch for a few $/month. ------ taude It's really a deal breaker that the watch needs a phone to be tethered. If I'm going to look at a map, I'm just going to use the phone that's in my pocket. Similarly, I don't really need a buzz notification into my wrist to know text messages are coming in. Not to mention, even though it's an Apple design, it still looks like a nerd- toy. ------ joesmo It seems that the Apple Watch needs an iPhone nearby to do anything useful. This is extremely disappointing and a complete failure from the get-go. Essentially, Apple Watch just becomes a tool for those too lazy to take their iPhone out of their pocket. It's absolutely useless for exercising or other activities where one wouldn't typically carry a phone. That was supposed to be one of the main selling points and one of the main target audiences. As a runner myself, I can't see wasting any money on this unless it gets its own Wifi/LTE/Bluetooth/Storage capabilities and I can leave my phone behind. It seems Apple missed this quintessential requirement. ------ kumarm It is cheaper to tie iPad Mini to wrist than buy an iWatch :). ~~~ gpmcadam And that's basically the same thing, too! /s ------ vermooten Also: why the hell do I need to see what the moon's gonna look like 6 days from now? ~~~ tdicola Very useful feature for werewolves. This watch will be a hit in the Twilight universe. ~~~ leoc It's essential information when I'm smuggling rum, or planning my escape from lunatic asylums. ~~~ 72deluxe Or for knowing when an apocalypse will occur. If the moon isn't going to look normal in 6 days, then I'll know that I need to hide and launch my rocket- ship. ------ paul It's surprisingly unattractive, but I think people here may be underestimating the quality of the interaction design. Of course it's impossible to know without trying one, but they've clearly put some thought into it. The video is worth watching: [http://www.apple.com/watch/films/#film- design](http://www.apple.com/watch/films/#film-design) ------ 72deluxe I notice in all of the pictures and videos that the "crown" (nub on the side) is a render....? Kind of like all of Behringer's new product announcements: you see them on their website and they may or may not ever actually exist or get released. Does this mean they haven't finished it, or have rushed to get to appear to be in the market before it is swallowed up by Android watches? ~~~ mbca Ever since the days of the original Firewire-only iPod, they've done 3D renders for extreme closeups like that. They are usually very accurate but still, it seems like it would be just a bit more honest to use a photo. ~~~ 72deluxe I didn't know that - thanks. I suppose it would be difficult to show that rotating nub without animation. ------ blinkingled Tim Cook tried to make the Apple Watch his iPhone moment but it came across as off - the Watch really is nothing as revolutionary in any way shape or form as the iPhone was. It is thick. They had to resort to gimmicks - communicating heart rates, drawing fish, three dots to ask for lunch(!) - to make it sound useful. The price is off by at least $100. They specifically danced around mentioning battery life - with these many features it might not actually be all that better than the competition - an area where Apple habitually shines. The UI also looked complicated to me - two ways to control it - touch and the unimaginatively named crown thing. Which is again very un-Apple. (When the watch is on your wrist I kept thinking how easily am I going to find the crown. For a normal watch that thing is very rarely used and that too when it is not on the wrist.) Not that I think SmartWatches are here to stay as a mainstream product but the little hope we had that Apple will knock it out the park with some must have feature - that hasn't panned out with the iWatch for sure. ~~~ _pmf_ > the Watch really is nothing as revolutionary in any way shape or form as the > iPhone was. The iPod brought portable digital music collections to the masses. The iPhone revolutionalized personal computing. The Watch has exchangeable wrist straps. ~~~ jodrellblank The Watch is Siri, out of your pocket. It's [http://www.dailymobile.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/Michae...](http://www.dailymobile.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/Michael-Knight.jpg) ------ ChuckMcM Interesting, a payments system that works only if you have the latest iPhone, and a watch that only works if you have (possibly latest) iPhone. I love the display, and I think they have some great ideas here but I was hoping more for the 'ipod' replacement that would work with any iOS 8 device (like iPads too) instead of a remote for your phone. ~~~ craigching Apple Watch works with 5, 5c, and 5s. And of course 6 and 6+ ~~~ digikata And if you notice, NFC of course isn't in the 5, 5c, 5s. So it makes me wonder if Apply Pay will work with a watch paired to an iPhone 5 series device. That might be a little nudge to get the Apple watch. ~~~ craigching Oh, that's a good point. You're probably right, can't use Apple Pay with a watch paired with 5/5c/5s. I noted that the credit card information is available via passbook, but the 5's don't have the related hardware to support Pay, right? I mean the watch has the NFC, but the ability to generate the one- time numbers probably has to come from the phone? ~~~ ChuckMcM It all seems a bit tangled together doesn't it? I get that when it makes sense but not when it crimps the addressable market fairly severely. ------ anmonteiro90 Main drawback is you need an iPhone in order to have one. Couldn't there be a version that didn't? ~~~ Cthulhu_ I was hoping for an iPod Nano evolution myself, i.e. a standalone device that gets extras like GPS and connectivity when near your iphone, but alas. Actually, was there anything on the ipod product line? ~~~ anmonteiro90 Nope, no announcements at least ------ brianmcdonough It's amazing, the variety of attitudes and opinions on this thread. People don't spend this much energy arguing the fine points of war and yet, it really is just a watch. The promotion is genius. Not sure about the watch, but if the chatter is any sign, it's already a success. ------ Rapzid My take away from the page is that it is entirely focused on cosmetics and construction. It seems loud and clear they are positioning this as a piece of designer apparel... I think Apple understands the most important thing most people in the market for a watch are interested in; How desirable it is to others. The whole page just talks about how hawt it is. As others have mentioned, I believe Google has put massive thought into smart- watch interaction and how it integrates within your life as a utility. I'm not saying Apple hasn't. But I am saying Apple's watch sales are going to be crazy nuts. People have room for one watch as a fashion statement. If it's not going to be an Armani who do you think they'll go with? ------ nilsimsa The one thing I like about my current watch is that is is solar charged. I haven't had any issues with replacing batteries for nearly 7 years. I'm not sure if I'm ready to charge yet another device on a regular basis. ------ adamjs Two words: Universal Identity. That's the killer use-case that everyone is missing. The Apple Watch has an NFC-chip, internet connection, and an API-- this is going to happen. (They've already announced a partnership with W Hotels for the Watch to replace keycards in rooms.) I think this would be super-convenient in the short-term but seems very worrisome in the long-term. My watch/phone/drivers-license is NOT me, and the more we rely on a single-point for authentication, the greater the potential for abuse and theft. More solutions need to be created. ------ exodust But we already know the time, it's on our phones? I don't get why anyone would buy this watch apart from trendy reasons. I bet sales will be low. Body monitoring sensors are better off hidden I rekon, then you can wear any watch, or no watch, and your phone does all the interfacing with the hidden sensors. All this should be open technology too, compatible with any phone rather than tied down to one system. It's your body after all, our data's fate shouldn't be a corporation's monopoly money. ------ malbs At first I was thinking I had to have one of these. Then I read feature page where it subtly tells you that most of the functionality is based on being tethered to an iphone. What a pity. ------ LukeWalsh Glad they finally got rid of that hideous header on the homepage ------ wooyi I run and occasionally do sprint tris. I carry a phone for both riding and running as I use Strava to track and compete with others. The thing I'm excited about is that this watch has a HR monitor, which is what I would need as you train based on intensity. Not to mention when you're stranded 50 miles due to a flat tire, you'll need that phone to call for a pickup. Others have mentioned listening to music,..etc. (I don't) Look - you're going to carry a phone everywhere you go on land. ------ paradite Any official site for WatchKit? I can't seem to find any. ~~~ k-mcgrady I'm assuming it's part of the iOS SDK like GameKit, MapKit etc. So developer.apple.com/ios ------ edpichler This is just the first release of another killer product from Apple. To compare, the first iPhone did not have some basic features found in many cell phones, including stereo Bluetooth support and 3G compatibility. I really believe that Apple will earn a ton of money, like in the first years of iPod or iPhone era. And the watches market size, bigger than cell phones, computers and portable music. It's a pity to do not have this company listed here, on stock market of Brazil. ~~~ cowardlydragon Seriously? A killer product from apple innovates on battery life, form factor, materials, and especially software. At least some or all of those come into play to make for a superior product. This is debatably better than the Moto 360. Oh, and it's VAPORWARE, not being released until next year after Christmas. I agree with others. This is a sign that Apple is no longer a leader in innovation. The glow of Jobs is fading from the company, despite how much I hate his beatification. ~~~ anmilo wait, you define vaporware as something that will be released within the next 6 months? ------ thomasahle Snapchat seems like the best suited form of communication for a device like this. I wonder why Apple didn't fit a camera into that huge black bevel.. ~~~ gurkendoktor Either Apple has left that for v2 just as with the original iPad, or people do actually find all these semi-hidden cameras creepy. I know I do (not a fan of Glass, either). ~~~ LeicaLatte True that. I find them creepy as fuck! ------ ars Are those actual photos on the home page or computer renderings? Because I hate how that thing looks - it looks sort of like a cartoon, like something from WALL-E. ~~~ craigching I agree on the looks in isolation, but the pictures of people wearing the watch makes them not look so bad IMO. I was surprised at the functionality, though, especially Apple Pay. ------ deanclatworthy I was rather impressed but at 350USD and most likely 350e in Europe it's an expensive purchase. Still no word on battery life either. ~~~ MBCook In the keynote they made mention that it's easy to charge each night, which probably means a day or two. That's better than the few hours some people are getting with the Moto 360, but it's not great. Let's hope it's at least one day consistently. I'm interested to see the reviews. I wonder if they've reached too far. ------ r0fl Curious to see how much the solid gold model costs. ------ brian_cloutier Miniaturization has come a long way, but there's no way this costs just $350 to make. Has Apple's strategy changed? They've always sold hardware at a healthy margin and made trivial amounts off software and music. There are some really nice features here, I would probably buy one if I didn't prefer android so much. But is it so nice that it will drive iPhone sales? ~~~ taude There's gotta be some expensive parts in there, like that sapphire screen. ~~~ asadotzler Sapphire screens that size are commonplace in real watches. I'm guessing that only added a few dollars to the BOM. ------ capkutay The only reason I want this watch is the exact features they were demo'ing: Quickly respond to texts without having to pull out and unlock my phone See who's calling me Using the map to track where I am in a route It seems like they nailed the low-hanging fruit and designed a pretty nice looking watch. Apple watch and the moto 360 both deserve credit for making smartwatches that don't look like total nerd gadgets ------ supernova87a Samsung's watch also needed a phone to work, and was just slightly clunkier. Why does Apple get such adulation in comparison? ------ Shivetya My biggest disappointment, they announced a product they cannot ship. I remember the good old days, ITS AVAILABLE TODAY. Now Apple is nothing than just what they used to lampoon, a creator of announcements; not products. Perhaps we can hope they use the time to take the obvious feedback flowing in and make it right by launch ~~~ RyJones This stymies people considering buying competitor watches for this Christmas season, which is the big reason to pre-announce. ------ n72 For many watches are used as a signaling device. That is, an expensive watch indicates to people that you have money. I assume these people aren't going to downgrade to an apple watch. I don't know what percentage of watch owners this is or whether it could affect uptake, but it could be factor. ~~~ nilkn While this might be true on one level, once you get into the realm of $350+ watches it can be very hard (if not impossible) for the casual and uninformed observer to guess whether a watch cost $500 or $5,000. $350 is already more than most people spend on any watch, and that's only the entry-level price -- I imagine some of the more premium versions of the watch are going to be $500+, though that's just speculation. That's quite expensive for a watch for the vast majority of people I think. ~~~ orbifold I'm fairly sure chronometers start at >1000$ dollars and truly expensive watches use either expensive metals or gems to signal their value. Also there are no Rolex, Patek Phillipe etc. that have that price. Quartz watches are uninteresting as a status symbol. ------ buro9 I haven't bought into Apple stuff too much, just an iPad and an Air. No iPhone, I have Android instead and my desktop is Linux. Question: Is the phone a mere accessory to the iPhone, or can it stand alone or with any phone (inc' Android and Windows Phone)? ~~~ aianus iPhone only ~~~ buro9 Alas, and it looks really gorgeous too. ------ neil_s The linked to page made me wonder whether Apple had released a watch that was literally just a watch, just a fancy time-keeping device. Its not until you go one level up and go to features that it shows what the watch can actually do. ------ thearn4 I can't help but think that there really is a hard limit on the number of powered electronics that a person is willing to routinely carry on their person, and that number is one. Am I alone in feeling this way? ------ ggchappell Beautiful page, but kinda worthless IMHO. When I look at it, I'm wondering: what's the UI like for a computer that isn't much bigger than my finger? (And if it's any good, why isn't it front & center?) ------ callesgg I want a smart clock that looks like a clock not like a small wrist calculator. Is that so hard? ------ teyc I'm surprised they haven't done a chunky smartwatch. That would provide plenty of battery life, and more room for electronics, while at the same time fill a bigger unmet niche. ~~~ 72deluxe Which niche would that be? People with bionic arms? Or weight-lifters? :-) ------ LeicaLatte As someone with 5 watches, I can't wait for this to release. ~~~ 72deluxe Do you have that many arms too? ~~~ LeicaLatte Are you saying you don't wish you had 5 arms? You must be a fool. But the answer to your question is, I was gifted 4 of them once people saw that I wear a watch. Watches work like that. ~~~ 72deluxe I would be happier with 4 arms, as a fifth arm would make balancing awkward. Let's hope that if you get a "smartwatch", people will start buying you plenty of them! ~~~ LeicaLatte I am not getting a "smart watch". Its called Apple Watch. ------ 72deluxe Does anyone else really like the subtle ways to share sketches / heartbeats? It kind of makes it more personal than just a Google Now / cards interface. Nice touch (literally). ------ tdicola I worry this will be a massive target for theft. If someone sees you wearing an Apple Watch they know you have at least a $350 watch and $400+ phone on your person. ~~~ Cthulhu_ Not really a valid argument; a lot of people have their phone out at all times (or even just to check the time), which isn't even attached to their wrists like this one is. Second, at $350, the resale value on the black market is what, $50? $100 if you're lucky? Not sure if a robbery is worth that. Besides, how do people with expensive watches (Rolexes and whatnot) manage? ~~~ gone35 I think tdicola's point is that, unlike any other watch, having an iWatch in your wrist _immediately_ signals you also have an iPhone 5 or higher tucked somewhere in that moment --since the watch, stupidly, only works tethered to an iPhone apparently. As it happens, this kind of wealth signaling is a legitimate personal safety risk in many countries today, esp lower- to middle-income ones. In those countries, very few people can afford to wear expensive watches; and when they do, they just don't wear them around everyday in every public setting --more like for special occasions, private parties, meetings, etc. Note the risk is not just 'merely' mugging: it can also be kidnapping (you or your loved ones), 'doxxing' you and your family and emptying your bank accounts and so forth, or even extreme forms of assault --beatings, rape or death. So it's kind of a big deal. iPhones, on the other hand, can be carried and used discreetly at all times, in non-conspicuous cases and using hands-free earphones --that is, until now, if you happen to be wearing a beaming iWatch right on your wrist, thus defeating the whole point. ------ AshFurrow Pretty sure the title of this should just be "Apple Watch", which is the title in the browser. Apple considers their products proper nouns. ------ foobarbecue So, it's basically a tiny external screen for your iPhone right? Snore. Wake me up when they put cellular capabilities in there. ~~~ 72deluxe Won't it feel like you're in Knight Rider if you're talking to your wrist all of the time? "Hey Kit! Prepare to meet me round the back of the house!" "MICHAEL. MICHAEL." ------ EGreg The Apple watch looks hot, but will it use a different store than the iOS store? Where is the info on registering apps for it etc? ~~~ robmcm I expect there will be no stand alone apps, they will be extension to iPhone apps. Therefore you need an iPhone app with a watchKit module in it to use it on the phone. ------ cdnsteve My perspective is that the majority of the market already owns a smartphone. Companies are trying to get new gadgets out there in peoples hands to increase sales and keep the corporate machine rolling. The problem is, people are happy with just their phones. I think wearables will have a very very slow uptake, especially since they require you to have a smartphone in your pocket. Someone call me when they get holograms to mass market, then I'll be interested. ------ T-zex Does it have an SDK for the third party apps? ~~~ jaredtking Yes, it's called WatchKit. Supposedly you can create third-party apps, glances, and notifications. ------ doczoidberg serious question: Does this watch anything do what my phone in my pocket doesn't? I can't see a benefit of using a smartwatch. ~~~ 72deluxe I think it complements your phone. So it is more convenient to glance at your wrist than rooting around in your pocket and getting your phone out, something some people find quite rude. If the trends reversed and they shrunk phones (like they did in the 90s) and put a strap on them, then they could easily replace the watch. But then battery life would be abysmal. ------ ForFreedom Why do I have to buy a watch for my fitness, I can arm-band my iphone and have all the details. ------ cpursley This makes me want.... a regular watch with good battery life. ------ nodesocket There is even an 18 karat gold edition. Sapphire crystal, waterproof, imported leather from the Netherlands. It goes behind the technology, to also embrace some of the finer things that make a quality watch... Quality. ------ dheer01 Steve jobs would have kept the configurations to only one. ~~~ darkstar999 Steve Jobs is dead. ------ pinaceae ths is using a system on a chip designed by Apple themselves - what the hell. they're going all in on chips. intel quo vadis? ------ fvdessen I would have been nice to have real photographs. ------ pasiaj Does anyone know what the lower button does? ~~~ thomasahle They said it 'opens a view of friends that you can click on'. They only showed it briefly. ------ bg0 I just wanted to swim with it... :( ------ vermooten I don't want my heart rate and other health data getting uploaded to Apple and anyone else. Big blocker for me. ------ freekh Was expecting something more than this from Apple - the vision seems to be the same as what google had for google wear. Hardware wise it is not much of an increment either (my opinion only of course). Then again, I didn't really get excited over the iPad either and that was a huge success. Setting that expectation aside, I would be fine with something simpler if it: \- it was classy looking: thin and round, steel and real/sapphire glass - ideally something that looks like one of those simple swiss clocks from the 1960s \- had an e-ink screen \- had a gps, which I can turn on and off \- had bluetooth notifications in case my phone is near \- had bluetooth audio support; and \- had spotify support. And here I mean that I want to be able to play music which has been synced to my watch over bluetooth, a cable or while docked. \- had heart-rate monitor would also be a plus of course. \- has enough battery for at least about a week, unless I am using the gps (for 2-3 hours), in which case it is fine if I have to charge it afterwards. Want to use it as a regular watch (with the occasional message/calendar notification and perhaps even daily weather updates), and as a music player and as a gps for when I am running/biking. Pebble almost have it, but their watches are way too ugly (my view only of course), too large for my wrists (so says my partner at least) and they don't have the extras that would make me really want one. I guess Spotify would have to be a partner as well, but I have Spotify on my radio so I guess it is only a small step to something like this as well. Should be possible with todays technology though I am not really into HW. In terms of processor-power it really only needs to keep track of time, draw the watch face every second, draw the notifications/menu/..., handle user input (could be buttons not capacitive) and play music (which probably is the most resource intensive thing, but an easy match for any modern SOC). So for processing, battery shouldn't be a problem. An e-ink screen is thin and does not require much power either. Bluetooth 4 LE chipsets are very power friendly I think, so I would imagine that should be fine as well. They are also fast enough (1 mbp/s) for syncing notifications and even for the occasional sound track sync (I don't mind waiting 5-10 minutes for an album). The gps doesn't really have to give me directions, only log my position and would be used only when I am running/biking, and as I said, should be possible to switch it completely off. The battery could be in the (detachable) wristband - I think I have seen quite thin and flexible polymer batteries around on the internet (though I am not sure if they are thin/flexible enough). Could also have different looks on the wristbands so you get one leathery-looking (for normal usage) and one plastic looking (for sports) like apple did (liked that part though it is hardly innovative). ------ aikah meta : I'm glad the product pages dont involve using JS to fuck up scrolling,for once. This fad needs to go. ------ JustinBlaird Broken link ~~~ smackfu Just CDN issues. ------ sremani Does it come with a kill-switch ? ------ personZ As much ink was spilled about competitors' failures, it's interesting that this won't be available some until vague window next year, and needs to be tethered to an iPhone. The interface looks interesting. The ridiculous draw pictures to each other bit, though -- what a gimmick. ~~~ unclebunkers It will be the most used feature by young lovers everywhere... ~~~ xgbi > It will be the most used feature by _rich_ young lovers everywhere... FIFY. At $349 a pop, I doubt you want to cruise in college with this on the wrist. ~~~ unclebunkers A $350 watch is a too expensive, but $325 beats headphones are chill? When I walk through the seedier parts of town where most of the rent is paid in food stamps and wishes, I still see beats headphones. ~~~ makomk Beats headphones are really heavily counterfeited at a tenth the price or less. I expect a lot of the ones you saw were fake. ~~~ 72deluxe Do they also counterfeit the ridiculous bass response in them? Or do they put decent drivers in them, like Beyerdynamic DT 770s with Beats logos on them? That'd be funny. ------ freeasinfree I expect muggings for jewelery to be making a comeback. ~~~ photojosh This will probably use Activation Lock as well. [http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/20/police-say- ios-7-a...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/20/police-say- ios-7-activation-lock-is-significantly-reducing-thefts-of-apple-products) ------ notastartup It would be nice if there was a watch which could do everything a smartphone can do. make calls, take photos and videos, instantly teach me how to fight like Jason Bourne on demand etc. ------ mgarfias The thought of the thing buzzing when one of serveral very talkative/verbose friends starts spamming me with SMSes drives me into a rage. And thats just thinking about it. ------ cowardlydragon To all of you criticizing the features, just remember: It's vaporware. ~~~ __david__ Vaporware does not merely mean "announced but not released". ------ drinchev Yeah okay, blah blah. I was at IFA Berlin 2014 and asked the SONY lady: "Hey what's the killer feature of your watch?". She said "It shows the time and tracks your steps!". IMHO Apple Watch did a great job. I couldn't find any smart watch that have navigation ( although with a paired smartphone ) and a possible ecosystem of apps that can use it. The whole IFA ... nobody could offer this. Althought, Of course it might be better, but Apple did a good job agains other tech companies in this field. Period. disclaimer: I'm not that big apple fan boy. ~~~ cowardlydragon Moto 360 is supposed to do navigation. ------ antidamage I've taken a hard look at every single smartwatch that's come out to date and found them wanting. I couldn't at any point bring myself to wear a device that needs to be charged every night and isn't "always on" yet doesn't have all the features I wanted. Little by little they got closer, but nobody had nailed it until Apple did. I think it'll initially be seen as a superficial luxury, much like a smartphone. Then without much effort and without anyone noticing it'll become a device that's at first convenient to have and then inconvenient not to have. I'm definitely getting an Apple watch and it'll take some amazing competition to steer me in another direction. I guess this means I'll have to get a Mac some time too. ------ marknutter I always measure the future success of a new Apple product by both the number and volume of negative comments related to. The greater the volume, the more likely it is to be successful. By all accounts, Apple Watch is going to be a smash hit. ~~~ wfjackson How did that work out for Ping ? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1659306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1659306) ~~~ marknutter Hardware ------ thomasahle The Apple fans [1] impress me with their non-fanaticism on this one. If this is a general trend across religions, I like where we are heading. Props! Apple watch certainly has qualities though. It's exciting to see how the market will develop now that all parties have opened their cards. [1]: [http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2fxe2t/its_hideous/?s...](http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2fxe2t/its_hideous/?sort=top) ~~~ mg74 "all parties" Cue poor Microsoft sobbing in a corner ~~~ thomasahle I don't think there are any rumors of Microsoft going into this market, is there? I don't know if they have anything to bring to the table. ~~~ 72deluxe Bring to the table? If they actually made the table computer (the ORIGINAL Microsoft Surface), that'd be great. A computer that doesn't get in the way.

When Facebook was Fun - gammarator http://bellm.org/blog/2012/12/02/when-facebook-was-fun/ ====== bhntr3 Will we ever solve the niche appeal vs. universal acceptance problem? Lots of stuff has this problem: Movies, TV, music, games (all entertainment really including Facebook.) That's what this article highlighted the most to me. It's hard to make something that feels small and personal and quirky yet appeals to everyone. If you make something beautiful and targeted inevitably someone says "Hey! You should expand!" I had this conversation with the owner of a tiny Japanese steakhouse in Tokyo where I had the best steak of my life. There were only like 8 tables and I was there alone so he sat down with me and we talked for a half hour. He told me how many times he had been approached to expand to other cities or the US over the 30 years they'd been open. But he didn't want the stress and he didn't think he could deliver the quality of meal if he did. Sushi and ramen places are like this in Japan too. They may be the best but they often stay small. I think we've lost track of that in the USA and particularly Silicon Valley (or maybe we never had it.) Would we be happier if Facebook had stayed elite university only and there were 100 social sharing websites for different niches? I dunno. Probably not. But I think we're also learning that one size fits all social is not as interesting on a massive scale as we thought it would be. Path isn't doing that well either though. Maybe the best we can do is subreddits. God save us. ~~~ DanBC > Maybe the best we can do is subreddits. God save us. Sub reddits are just Usenet on the web but worse, rather than anything social. Maybe if Reddit added a profile page with some social stuff (for paying users?) they could destroy Facebook. ~~~ artursapek Eh, I feel like most people on reddit like being anonymous on reddit. ~~~ DanBC Well, those people wouldn't be affected. Even those people with a profile could still create throwaway accounts for those other subreddits. There are a few sub reddits where people are sharing real life information, so maybe confirmed profiles would be beneficial for them. I don't know if that just adds a bunch of cost and not much revenue. ~~~ artursapek I really think it would just ruin the simple, anonymous beauty of reddit to start involving identities. Leave that for IAmA :) People go to reddit to get away from reality. ------ craigc I was a freshman at NYU in 2004 when Facebook launched there. I really miss Facebook in those days. It was so minimalistic but that was part of its charm. If Facebook looked and acted like it did today in the early days there is NO way it would have caught on. In fact, I may be in the minority, but I barely use Facebook at all these days. One of the core ideas that I think really made it great was there were only two privacy options (if I remember correctly). Make your profile visible to just your friends, or just people in your network (nyu.edu email in my case). You could see pictures and names of other people, and you could see a limited profile if they sent YOU a friend request, but that was it. Another thing is it was really easy to find people with common interests. For example if you listed a certain movie or book you liked, you could click on it in your profile and it would show you everyone else who also liked it (ordered by your friends first, then people in your network ordered by friends in common, then locked profiles of people outside your network). It's a shame that they have gotten so far away from what they once stood for. ~~~ lmm >Another thing is it was really easy to find people with common interests. For example if you listed a certain movie or book you liked, you could click on it in your profile and it would show you everyone else who also liked it (ordered by your friends first, then people in your network ordered by friends in common, then locked profiles of people outside your network). I was surprised by the claim that it was more private in those days, for just that reason. It was much easier to search for complete strangers (within your university) based on quite specific criteria. ------ TravisLS Ah, I remember those days - or the days right after those days (I was at NYU and got Facebook in late '04). It was so much fun to friend someone you met, see where they were from, all their interests (some real, some comical), what crazy comments happened to be on their wall, and what "groups" they belonged to. The Facebook of today is still valuable, but in an entirely different way. Facebook in 2004 had nothing to do with sharing content, it was just a database of people that you'd met in college that was exceptionally fun to browse. That database of people aspect is almost entirely hidden now in favor of the feed (useful but different), and what you "like" (the pages where you clicked "like" to get a $2 coupon). I recall reading somewhere PG saying there may be an opportunity now for a "Facebook for college students", which I'd imagine as a realization of the early value of Facebook. I've batted around the idea of setting up oldfacebook.com, just as a copy of that early version. Heck, you could even let people sign up by connecting with Facebook. ~~~ AgentConundrum > _I've batted around the idea of setting up oldfacebook.com_ I wouldn't recommend using that domain name. ------ jval I honestly think that Facebook has gone backwards pretty quickly over the last few years. I'm not sure what their internal metrics look like, but I would hazard a guess and say that long term users tend to spend far less time on the site as the years pass. Anecdotally, most of the people I know are looking for an excuse to stop using Facebook because they no longer enjoy browsing the site, but they are locked in because people use it for event planning and they have a fear of missing out. I think the site can continue to rely on these kinds of network effects to keep users active and signing in, but whether it keeps the company insulated from competition or profitable with users spending enough minutes on the site is another question entirely. ~~~ brc I agree with your sentiments. It's actually completely broken for my uses now. The only use it has for me is looking at things my friends have been up to - photos, updates, that sort of thing. But now the weird algorithm they have gets it completely wrong. I get treated to an endless feed list of stupid cat photos from someone I haven't spoken to since high school, and yet a close friend posts a picture of them with the kids at the beach and it never shows up, probably because they only post once per month. I try and click 'most recent' for my feed and then the dates get inverted and I end up seeing something posted a month ago. Notwithstanding all the inserted sponsored stories (whatever, I get that they need to pay the bills), the fact that the newsfeed isn't any longer a newsfeed, but an algorithmically curated list of what it thinks I might like means that it has become useless and unreliable. Sure I can probably tweak settings to get it to work again, but why not just have it the way it was? I check it less and less and I will probably drop off altogether in the next year or so. The network effect can work in reverse - if none of your friends are using it any longer, there is less incentive to use it yourself. I much prefer Twitter as it is right now - it just shows your feed and it's up to you to add/remove people who contribute to your feed. Add some simple innovations to Twitter like an easy way to make a group of followers private for tweets, and the ability to load albums rather than single photos for tweets, and it would completely replace Facebook for my personal use. The other problem Facebook faces is like that of any fashion label, movie franchise or performer - becoming old hat. There will become a point where Facebook is something that your parents use, and therefore to be avoided at all costs. But when the parents feel like using it less, and the kids won't go there, I can see lots of trouble heading down the pike. ~~~ im3w1l You know that there exists a manual override -- see less/more/no updates from a certain user, right? ~~~ brc To quote Mark Zuckerberg 'what we found is that users hate making lists'. The problem is not that one person posts too much spam - it's that I don't ever get to see other peoples posts at all. I don't want to have to make a list of my 'important friends'. I want to see it all, I can easily work the scroll bar to get past the bits I don't want to see. ------ Shenglong Facebook gets a lot of criticism, and while there are issues, overall I think the folks there have done quite well. Changes bother me for a bit, just like they do everyone, but over the years I've found that I've had to think less and less about what I want to see. In fact, now I can just go to Facebook, scroll down and skim a few hundred stories in a few seconds. Facebook isn't mean to be _fun_ \- it's meant to be a tool to enhance our daily lives; I think it's done just that. ------ frooxie In 2000-2002 I was a member of LunarStorm, a (now defunct) Swedish community where at one time 90 percent of Sweden's high school students were members. What I liked about it was that it gave you much more opportunities to interact with - and get to know - new people; Facebook mostly keeps the interaction to people you know, and you can't really start talking to anyone who seems interesting, or reading what they write and commenting on it without officially becoming "friends" first. But following the writing of interesting people and commenting on it was how I _made_ friends on LunarStorm, many of which I still know ten years later. I miss that. And I don't think you can easily recreate it in the panopticon that is Facebook; having every conversation broadcast to everyone you know doesn't make for a relaxing atmosphere. (I haven't tried Google+, so I don't know how it works in that respect.) ~~~ im3w1l Joining groups could be a solution. ------ majormajor Honestly, it's a lot more _useful_ to me now. It's not as novel, naturally, but would I be happier if it was still just limited to people I knew from college and I still had to visit their profiles individually to see their updates? I don't think so. If it hadn't evolved I bet it would've been "killed" already—for instance, if FB didn't have the news feed, Twitter would become a lot more attractive to me. ------ conradfr I signed up five years ago and yes it was more fun back then. But was it because of the stupid boxes on your profile (e.g "Which dictator are you"), because it was new, because my parents weren't on it, or because every next show or communication of my favorite band didn't appeared on my home page back then ? I don't know. ~~~ thirdsun I agree, today my facebook feed is a collection of bad jokes, pictures containing bad jokes written in comic sans and stupid polls and question in desperate need for likes and comments ("like of you remember this guy!"). ------ rayiner Hipster HN-er liked Facebook before my grandma got on. ------ slash-dot If you think about it, the fact that facebook has so many users makes it quite cool. Practically everyone I know is on facebook. Though I do see the appeal of a private university network it would eventually end because the people running it would want to make more money. Also adoption to a new more exclusive network wouldn't be as fast since we already have facebook. ~~~ joering2 > Also adoption to a new more exclusive network wouldn't be as fast since we > already have facebook. We also had "everyone" on MySpace. And before Friendfeed. And in times when most did not know what "internet" is, geocities. Its not a rocket science to realize that to your users its all about cost of adoption versus reward they will get. Said that, if there is some new cool feature that Facebook does not have, and that feature is so awesome that is worth me spending my time on creating just another account, then I will do so. If that new website and new cool feature keep me away from Facebook, then Facebook will be in trouble. But so far, noone has come, just yet, with some universal cool feature that would be much cooler than socializing online with people I know offline via site that has mostly everyone signed in. But rest assured internet will evolved because at the end of the day, its run by humans and their behavior offline/online evolves too. The "new Facebook", whatever it will be, will have nothing to do with whether current Facebook succeed or not (it did), as it made plenty of people millionaires, gave thousands jobs, and served it purpose of "connecting everyone in the world together". ~~~ graue > We also had "everyone" on MySpace. And before Friendfeed. And in times when > most did not know what "internet" is, geocities. I understand where you're coming from, but people forget about scale when they make comparisons like this. Myspace at its peak had around 100 million users, mostly teens and young adults. Your parents and aunts and uncles and grandma were never on Myspace, but for many people, all of the above are on Facebook, which has a billion users. Far more people are on the internet in general, as well as a broader and more representative sample of the population, compared to the days of GeoCities. “Everyone” was not on GeoCities or Myspace to nearly the extent that “everyone” is on Facebook today. It's not at all impossible that Facebook will be replaced, but the task is a much harder one because compared to Myspace at its peak, Facebook's reach is an order of magnitude greater. ~~~ joering2 ok, I didnt make myself clear. By "everyone" I meant everyone that knew what Internet is. In terms of penetration and reach-wise, there is no difference between MySpace and Facebook. While there may be 100MM on MySpace and 800MM on Faceook, the difference is that back then much fewer people were aware that internet exists. If anything, I dont find "facebook killer" to be harder to achieve just because FB reach is so great. Things go viral nowadays; if something cooler comes along, then it will be spread across FB. I rather find it hard to find something that users would value more than hanging out with friends online. ~~~ graue > the difference is that back then much fewer people were aware that internet > exists That's pretty much the point. In the time that Facebook got big, hundreds of millions of people were beginning to use the internet to socialize for the first time. They didn't have to unlearn how Friendfeed worked, or abandon their contacts on Myspace, because they had never used these services. It was all new and Facebook snapped them up. There aren't hundreds of millions more for the next social network to snap up. In the developed world, the internet is done growing. Every North American or European who is ever going to use the internet already does. Everyone who would be interested in using a social network is already on Facebook. Not literally everyone (we all know a few people who aren't on Facebook), but close enough that the trick they pulled off can't be repeated. ------ steele Maybe what you miss is not old facebook but the time in your life when you happened to start using it. Consider the amount of time you spent there versus slashdot; then compare that to the time you spend on facebook now and how much more of your life network, not just social, is reflected there today. ------ jrogers65 I found one of the articles this one links to to be very insightful - [http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash- creato...](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator- survives-ad-board-the/) > Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06 said he was accused of breaching security, violating > copyrights and violating individual privacy by creating the website > The charges were based on a complaint from the computer services department > over his unauthorized use of on-line facebook photographs, he said. > “Issues about violating people’s privacy don’t seem to be surmountable,” he > wrote at that point. “I’m not willing to risk insulting anyone.” ------ ErikAugust "Part of Facebook’s appeal in those first days was that it was clean, protected space very different from the all-too-public hurly-burly of MySpace [10]." That's it, really. It was an elite college kid social network. Now, anything but. ~~~ jff At least you still can't add custom HTML to your profile. That was, beyond a doubt, the worst part of MySpace. ------ mfreemanassatan I have a theory that perception of anonymity is directly related to long-term enjoyability; as social networks become larger and more people you know join, you feel less anonymous, and less likely to post original content or espouse the controversial views that lead to interesting discussion. On the other hand, you have much more anonymous (remember, I'm talking about how anonymous users _feel_ ) venues like reddit, 4chan, or IRC, which have a rather large niche that is relatively stable and full of engaged users. ------ iterationx No one seems to notice the obvious... that his life and his friends lives were certainly more exciting when he was a Junior at Harvard. This reminds me of a study that found that many East Germans were nostalgic about East Germany before the wall came down, but the researchers concluded that it was because it was because the interviewed people had been in there 20s at that time, not because of any particular aspect of the East German society. ------ chimeracoder > a hidden record of who you aspired to be, as you became who you are now > instead. Substitute "public" for "hidden", and that line could describe most social media these days. ------ tgrass Nobody goes there anymore, it's way too crowded. -Berra ------ Rhymenocerus I love how people act like MySpace never even existed now. Watching "The Social Network" you'd think that Mark invented the entire concept.