Curriculum Vitae of Yuri Orlov [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://physics.cornell.edu/sites/people/files/Orlov%20c.v.%20and%20pubs%202018.pdf <comment><USER2> Very surprised and happy to see this here.

It's so hard to grasp, completely unthinkable to understand the hardships that people like Dr. Orlov went through, and yet, how they overcame them to do great things, that truly are still pushing humanity forwards. Puts things into perspective when we complain about (relatively meaningless) stuff.

I'm counting at least 20 publications along with Yannis Semertzidis (I had the pleasure of working along him), and a slew of other authors on g-2 and EDM experiments using storage rings.

When all is said and done, my money on where the next big Physics breakthrough will come from is this; muon g-2 is probably the most important discrepancy between theory and observations, in our current understanding of the subatomic world. People are working hard on pushing the boundaries of Precision Physics, to build smaller, but orders of magnitude more efficient particle accelerators, and make history have one more reason to immortalize people like Dr. Orlov.</comment>


It was US Airways flight 808 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bahneman.com/content/it-was-us-airways-flight-808 <comment><USER2> Nice work. I find it somewhat amusing that the flight from Hawaii is coded "808" -- I wonder if that was intentional?</comment>


Expensify is now free for all Concur users - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/30/expensify-concur-customers/

<comment><USER2> Smart and extremely bold move. Interested to see what happens with it. Expensify is a fantastic service.</comment>


Droid, Pre, and iPhone compared - <AUTHOR> http://www.billshrink.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-motorola-droid-versus-iphone-3gs-versus-palm-pre/

<comment><USER2> The weakness of the ubiquitous feature matrix is that you can't just put a check mark next to "usability".

<comment><USER3> I also thought it was goofy that this matrix didn't relate any of the associated turn-by-turn nav costs in the iPhone. You have to buy a pricey(for the app store) app and then pay a monthly subscription fee on top of that. This omission is odd especially considering that it's a blog, post and info graphic about costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it might be worth noting (much to the chagrin of the Apple haters) that the iPhone does pretty well in this comparison, despite its relative age.

That being said, my G1 is looking sadly impotent these days, and I'm wondering what kind of shenanegins I'd have to pull to keep my current T-Mobile plan, but use a Driod.

<comment><USER5> The 3Gs came out the same time as the Pre, and after the HTC Magic.

<comment><USER6> Where are you getting this info? iPhone 3G came out a year before the Pre...

<comment><USER7> Article compared the iPhone 3GS, which is the latest model iPhone and hit the market June 2009. Note that "iPhone 3G" and "iPhone 3GS" are different models.

<comment><USER6> thanks. he updated his comment to say 3Gs...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it just me or does this not mention the keyboard, which is going to be a huge selling point for many Blackberry addicts?

<comment><USER9> Sliding keyboards are nowhere near as good as BlackBerry style keyboards.

I had an E71 for a while and the reason I loved it was because the keyboard was _always there_. It was never a pain to pull it out, wait for the screen orientation to flip, enter, close again. You just typed away.

The comparison to the G1 or the N75 with pull out keyboards was huge. It just added a mental road block into every action.

<comment><USER10> The nice part IMO about the G1's slide-out keyboard is that you get the choice of both worlds: immediate on-screen keyboard for quick input needs, and a nice proper keyboard (plus full screen space) for bigger input fields. Blackberry keyboards are painfully cramped by comparison...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The difference in the cost of plans is a bit shocking. AT&T and Verizon are 50% more expensive than Sprint and T-mobile, and T-mobile doesn't appear to have a data usage cap.

<comment><USER12> Not sure about AT&T, but Sprint does not have a data cap either.

<comment><USER13> This used to be true, but a while back Sprint added in a 5G cap like the others...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No love for nokia n900 :( Though it is not out yet

<http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/specifications/>

Only comes unlocked in US, 3G only works on tmobile.

</comment><comment><USER15> Oy veh, I was looking at this and thinking this was a blog for a dude named "Bill Shrink", not a blog for bargain hunters (as in "shrink my bills").</comment>


Activity Does Not Always Equal Productivity - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/activity-does-not-always-equal-productivity/?_r=0 <comment><USER2> >Human beings are designed to operate in 90-minute cycles. At night, we move through the five stages of sleep in that time — the Basic Rest Activity Cycle. During the day, we are guided by our ultradian rhythms, and we move from high physiological alertness toward physiological fatigue in 90-minute intervals.

I was in the comments here the other day defending the use of words like "design" and "purpose" to describe evolution. But even for me, this sets off my bullshit detector.

I would accept the sleep thing, though a precise 90 minutes is a stretch: "In humans, the average length of the first sleep cycle is approximately 90 minutes and 100 to 120 minutes from the second to the fourth cycle, which is usually the last one." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Physiology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Physiology)

But does anyone have a citation for that kind of cycle during the day?

<comment><USER3> Somewhat related to what your asking, but according to a rather famous study done by KA Ericsson on Deliberate Practice and it's effect of learning, the optimal learning (for violinists and I've seen similar results when applied to my Mixed Martial Artists) is 90 minutes of deliberate activity, a short break, 90 minutes of further deliberate practice, followed by a second break, by another 90 minutes of deliberate practice. (Time for training sessions is of course the enemy, and practice is deliberate enough to cause mental and physical fatigue).

Source: [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/D...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/DeliberatePractice\(PsychologicalReview\).pdf)</comment></comment>


Is SproutCore worth it?  The Reg finds promise, limitations. - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/02/inside_sproutcore/

<comment><USER2> I tried there demo site and it didn't work in IE 6 and I have a huge number of IE 6 users. I would love a sexy looking site but probably the best way to attain it is to make it in a more low tech fashion (grab the good looking parts and just use those, table backgrounds, etc).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a huge Prototype fan, so SproutCore initially turned me off, but the more I look, the more potential I see. Anyone used it for more than experiments, and have opinions to share?</comment>


Nvidia GPU-powered autonomous car teaches itself to see and steer - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/3062661/consumer-electronics/nvidia-gpu-powered-autonomous-car-teaches-itself-to-see-and-steer.html <comment><AUTHOR> Sadly I don't think the video in this article contains the shorter one from this years GTC keynote of the car driving through a few bushes whilst it was still in the early stages of learning.</comment>


A Second Coronavirus Death Surge Is Coming - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/second-coronavirus-death-surge/614122/ <comment><USER2> I'm consistently impressed by the new forms of denialism about the ongoing disaster of a pandemic response in the US (of which pointing at the death rate discrepancy was a recent, popular genre). I understand that people are fundamentally irrational, but now that many countries have gotten the disease to a manageable state, so much psychic energy in this country seems devoted to denying the validity of their approaches and coming up with new reasons why it won't actually be so bad here, contrary to all evidence.

<comment><USER3> Agree, though for many Americans it doesn't take too much energy since they don't pay any attention to what's going on in other countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Absolutely amazingly clear article which I'd sum up as _we are screwed_ sub- headline bring that we had a path and we failed to follow through and it'll be worse than the last wave now.</comment>


FriendsReunited is closing down - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@liife/friendsreunited-the-sunset-of-an-era-3e5b2ea7bb11 <comment><USER2> It would be great if, in addition to allowing the export of photos, the social graph could be saved. Friends Reunited has data on my cohort that Facebook doesn't, and in any case I think FR is a much more ethical custodian of my data than Facebook.</comment>


Startup Life Is - <AUTHOR> http://blog.obiefernandez.com/content/2011/07/startup-life-is.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I was searching the net for free rails books, and I came across this blog post, I am also currently reading a book called Rework (by Jason Fried and DHH from 37signals)

And this post strikes me as almost a complete opposite of what Rework preaches (for the lack of a better term), noting that I only read the first 100 pages (which are more like 30 pages considering the amount of whitespace and pictures in this book)

I am really falling in love with the ideas Rework teaches (is this a better term), and I believe that they fit more with my experience in life, which is something I didn't expect, considering I find DHH obnoxious. But I have to admit Rework is a great book

Now pointing back to the blog post in the link I shared, it's written by Obie Fernandez, which is also someone that I really don't like, I read a while ago another blog post by him, about how you should be a hustler and stuff to make it in life, and I guess he didn't change. Some people just like to do a little bit of all, and this I definitely admire, so I dislike Obie, but this doesn't mean he is a bad guy.

I guess the point here is, even thought Hashrocket and probably anything Obie touches, will be done using methods that are the exact opposites of how 37signals get work done. Both are successful, and apparently happy ... Perl was right all along TIMTOWTDI</comment>


Facebook secretly deleted some of Mark Zuckerberg's private messages - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-deleted-mark-zuckerbergs-private-messages-2018-4 <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16770818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16770818)</comment>


Show HN: We built this so startups don't waste time raising money - <AUTHOR> http://blink.vc/

<comment><USER2> It seems like a good idea - but the site as it stands now doesn't give me any confidence that any VCs will actually see proposals, and even if they do, that they would take it seriously. Are any VCs on board currently?

You need to find some way to get _way_ more information into the pitches... For example financials, forecasts, a plan. I can't imagine ever investing in something based solely on a short, free-form text pitch (and I'm not a VC.)

Also just a little note on tone - going back to my first point, I'm not sure any VC would take kindly to the idea of "Get Spammed" \- You might also want to be careful with your test data ("some rich fart" for example) lest you put off any VCs that happen to see this whilst it is on HN.

Hope that helps. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Dan! :) We'll take a look at the language and see if we can get some VCs on board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> At least an "about" or "faq" is missing. I (like a lot of people I would guess) skipped the "tutorial" or walkthrough and couldn't find it again. It's not like the website is a challenge to use, but some more info would be nice, including an email to send feedback and suggestions maybe?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey saganus, our About page is now up: [http://blink.vc/about](http://blink.vc/about)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks, OP here, would love your input on what we can do better with this site!

<comment><USER4> Get actual VCs to use it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hard to tell if this is satire or not...if it's the latter, probably a little more explanatory text would be useful, though the interactive walkthrough is nice.

The main problem here is the bidding mechanism. Clicking on "Bid" sends me to my OS mail client (which, in my case, has never been initialized)...at the very least, go to a contact form rather than having the "bids" be sent through plain email.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey danso, thanks for the feedback! We bootstrapped this one all the way down, and we thought we'd take advice from PG's Do Things that Don't Scale article [1].

Sorry it came off as satire, it's totally legit, a few of the things on the homepage were just examples of how to use it.

[1] [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)</comment></comment>


A Functional Pattern System for Object-Oriented Design - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20080224141838/http://www.mm.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de:80/~kuehne/fps/ <comment><USER2> The 'some pages' link to the c2 wiki (aka Portland Patterns Repository) has a good overview.

My key take-away:

> Since FunctorObjects are an enabling mechanism for LazyEvaluation some of > the caveats for LazyEvaluation should be noted here. LazyEvaluation makes it > impossible to know the exact order in which operations will be executed and > in fact makes it possible for some operations not to be executed at all. It > is therefore important to ensure that the FunctorObjects that may be lazily > evaluated do not rely on state that may change during the time when > LazyEvaluation may occur and that it does not change state that is relied on > by other operations that may occur during the same time period. > FunctorObjects? that can have side-effects are called Procedure Objects by > ThomasKuehne. These are very useful but some care must be taken with the > timing of their side-effects.

[0] [http://wiki.c2.com/?FunctionalPatternSystemForObjectOriented...](http://wiki.c2.com/?FunctionalPatternSystemForObjectOrientedDesign)</comment>


An interactive way of blogging about JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://blog.klipse.tech/javascript/2016/06/20/blog-javascript.html <comment><USER2> We share a similar vision at Tonic that code snippets should be completely runnable. With Tonic embeds ( [https://tonicdev.com/embed](https://tonicdev.com/embed) ) your code is automatically connected to every version of every one of the 300,000 library on npm (just require("library") or require("library@version"), its already pre-installed). Additionally, the code is run in an actual container, so you can use filesystem examples, spin up a web server, whatever you'd like:

1\. Example that spins up an express server in the example you can actually hit: [http://blog.tonicdev.com/2016/03/09/snapshots.html](http://blog.tonicdev.com/2016/03/09/snapshots.html)

2\. A blog post I wrote about hacking JSX with many runnable examples: [http://tolmasky.com/2016/03/24/generalizing- jsx/](http://tolmasky.com/2016/03/24/generalizing-jsx/)

3\. Node's fs docs with the examples converted to embed: [http://capicue.com/fs.html](http://capicue.com/fs.html)

<comment><USER3> Good to see Tonic Dev is still alive, not sure what you guys are doing though because there have been no new features/fixes for as long as I can remember and performance and bugs are still bad and highly visible.

For other people: Is there anything like Tonic Dev (notebook kind of thing) that runs locally? I want to love Tonic but without offline support, that will never happen...

<comment><USER2> Lots of stuff in the pipeline, any specific feature requests in particular? With regard to performance, are you by chance using Firefox? We have some known issues there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I built something very similar a while ago: [https://github.com/ghinda/jotted](https://github.com/ghinda/jotted)

I'd say it's more lightweight by default (it's not mandatory to use an editor like CodeMirror) and more flexible because of the plugin system (there are plugins for using Ace or CodeMirror as editors, or for compiling ES6, CoffeeScript, Less, Stylus, Markdown).

It also has a Console plugin, like the one in devtools, that makes it work like klipse. [https://twitter.com/ghindas/status/697790917302996993](https://twitter.com/ghindas/status/697790917302996993)

There are a bunch of demos on the site: [https://ghinda.net/jotted/#demos](https://ghinda.net/jotted/#demos)

<comment><USER5> Shout-out to @ghinda for creating Jotted. We've been using it for our startup [Educative]([https://www.educative.io](https://www.educative.io)) and are pretty happy with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very nice. I may use this the next time I blog about JavaScript.

One inconvenience. I entered "while (1) {}" and the page locked up and needed to be reloaded. An infinite loop could easily happen unintentionally, and it's not user-friendly to hang, especially when the goal is an Alan Kay style educational/interactive system. It would be nice to have a "stop" button so the user could continue editing, rather than losing the page. Unfortunately I don't see any way to do this within existing browsers.

<comment><USER7> I've watched people use "learn to code" websites with this sort of auto- running javascript trip up on infinite loops and get frustrated as the page freezes. A sure-fire way for a user to accidentally do this is for them to make a `while(true)` loop first before trying to add a `if(x) break;` statement inside of it, or when they're trying to make a recursive function and mess it up.

The problem is that the page is just having the browser execute the javascript directly. Javascript in the browser doesn't have ways to directly debug itself or enforce resource limits. It would be nice if there was a javascript interpreter (yes, in javascript) that could enforce step and resource limits and have debugging support that pages could interactively embed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The same site has also done similar plugins for ClojureScript: [http://blog.klipse.tech/clojure/2016/06/07/klipse-plugin- tut...](http://blog.klipse.tech/clojure/2016/06/07/klipse-plugin-tuto.html)

And Ruby: [http://blog.klipse.tech/ruby/2016/06/20/blog- ruby.html](http://blog.klipse.tech/ruby/2016/06/20/blog-ruby.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> The Alan Kay quote struck me as interesting.

There is no reason why Wikipedia couldn't do that.

I wrote a MediaWiki plugin to do pretty much this for JavaScript. I use it for helping teach kids JavaScript. [http://fingswotidun.com/code/index.php/Main_Page](http://fingswotidun.com/code/index.php/Main_Page)

The difficulty arises when you want to extend the abilities of the wiki to do things like this within the revision/revertible mechanism that Wikipedia supports.

<comment><USER10> It is indeed something that makes sense. But I think it opens up a can of worms that is not just related to revisions.

Now that articles are not just text and images, they need a standard on what they can support. What version of Logo will they use? Do they have an emulator, or a transpiled JS VM? Who created that? Will that support mobile devices? How do you enter text on those? What are the licenses involved? OK, Logo is a given, but what else will they support? JavaScript? Processing? C++? What version of the compiler? Do they host it themselves or use a public service? It gets blurry. What about the article about an old computer, will they also embed an emulator? Those exist. And a game if it's public domain? It's a computer, after all, right? Where do you draw the line?

I agree with the sentiment, but there are big logistical and political problems related to that. Just look at how weird their audio/video support is already because they wanted to make sure they're using free players, free codecs, free assets.

I realize I'm only listing problems, but it's important to think of those. From my perspective, I think it's a lot more about WikiPedia picking their battles and focusing in textual information (with tidbits of other media) rather than "never thinking about that".

Actually letting people play with the technology is an awesome thing, but I wonder if WikiPedia is the place for that.

Good thing sites like [https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games](https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games) exist.

<comment> yoz-y It is also worth mentioning that a vast majority of code snippets is not runnable. They are fragments of large programs, might require additional files (going far beyond some standard libraries that one can pull, etc.).

All in all it would help, but only with trivial snippets approaching hello- world complexity or self-contained examples better suited for tutorials rather than encyclopaedias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very cool indeed. I would implement it as a React component - and then in any view just have to

        <Javascript>
          [1,2,3].map((n) => (n+1))
        </Javascript>

But the of course requires you to implement the page using react, which isn't what everyone is doing.

<comment><USER12> Could use web components, which are supported in some browsers, and can be polyfilled in others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Jeff Atwood also has a very great writeup of something similar to this on his blog[1]

I also have something similar going on with my blog. It focuses on game development, so I actually embed an iframe with a canvas to let the users play around with the code as they learn.

I really think that interactive interfaces like this for blogs and tutorials will be more common place in the future.

[1][https://blog.codinghorror.com/our-programs-are-fun-to- use/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/our-programs-are-fun-to-use/)

<comment><USER14> Link to your gamedev blog please

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nit: using highlighted monospace for every language name and proper noun is both wrong and distracting.

<comment><USER16> Yeah if that's another new way to blog about JavaScript then I'm out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is really cool. Another similar system I saw recently is [http://www.joelotter.com/kajero/](http://www.joelotter.com/kajero/) which aims more towards the data visualization side of things by including native support for D3.

</comment><comment><USER18> Unless approached very carefully this has some frightening XSS implications: innocent looking HTML entered into comments could suddenly become automatically executed JavaScript.

<comment><USER7> A smart thing to do would be to run it in an iframe with the sandbox attribute so that it doesn't get access to the page's or origin's data, but that wouldn't protect from local denial-of-service attacks against the browser that infinitely loop or allocate tons of memory.

<comment><USER9> When I made my MediaWiki Plugin I don't think the sandbox attribute was not a thing.

What I did was run code in a worker with events and drawing commands passed through messages.

[http://fingswotidun.com/code/index.php/Naughty_Bits](http://fingswotidun.com/code/index.php/Naughty_Bits)

There's probably still a few more things to do to make it properly secure, but at least you can't just kill the page with while(true);

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is actually pretty cool. One of the major things that actually help learning JS is how easy it is to test out a piece of code before writing it to your main code base. Simply pop open a JS console on any browser and test that line out that you aren't sure would work.

This works in the same vein and lets you play around with the code you are learning. I am definitely using this the next time I blog about code or algorithms

</comment><comment><USER20> On mobile it works horribly: I try to delete some characters and it gets autoupdated and recovers those characters, so deleting becomes impossible.

</comment><comment><USER21> I agree with this sentiment but why stop at JavaScript? With repl.it you can embed dozens of languages (albeit not yet editable in the embed). Here is a quick demo on my blog [http://amasad.me/2015/04/09/hello- world/](http://amasad.me/2015/04/09/hello-world/)

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem with embedding iframes is that each iframe runs on a separate context. For instance, you cannot define a variable in one iframe and access it from the other one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's not that Wikipedia devs can't imagine it, it is the social pressures of the project that make it impossible for someone to realize a change of that scope.

Mediawiki plugins or Greasemonkey scripts pave the way for what takes years of "project work" to integrate.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does Medium support this?

</comment><comment><USER24> Worth mentioning that you can embed CodePens. But yeah maybe this is nice for some things, like demos of pure logic that don't need markup/CSS.

</comment><comment><USER25> I like it.</comment>


Download Advanced Linux Programming Book as PDF files. - <AUTHOR> http://www.advancedlinuxprogramming.com/alp-folder

<comment><USER2> You rarely see these sorta posts on HN, which makes me :(

Post your favorite compilations: [http://www.scottklarr.com/topic/115/linux- unix-cheat-sheets-...](http://www.scottklarr.com/topic/115/linux-unix-cheat- sheets-the-ultimate-collection/)

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, once HN used to excite me with so much of information, but now its more of news than exciting stuff, nyways i hang around here cos its HN. lol.

<comment><USER2> I can concur; maybe this will get your dopamine pumping. <http://upload.gaiatools.com/files/googlesuggest_1.png>

<comment><USER3> made me laugh: "why is everyone" suggests "why is everyone saying why so serious"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a way to get this book all in one PDF file? Having it split by chapter seems like a good way for me to get frustrated trying to navigate it.

<comment><USER5> Have a look at pdftk, in an Ubuntu repository near you. It can do many things with PDF files.</comment></comment>


FiveStars (YC W11) Picks Up $14 Million to Challenge the Loyalty Punch Card - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120802/exclusive-fivestars-picks-up-14-million-to-challenge-the-loyalty-punch-card/ <comment><USER2> What a fluff article.

You would think they have traction and tons of merchants on board. They don't.

Do a location search. Zoom out the map on <http://www.fivestarscard.com/locations>

There are only locations in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and literally a smattering of other places.

Then there is this statement:

"Since officially launching in 2011, FiveStars has signed up 400,000 customers across 11 states; those customers have purchased 3.5 million items and are on track to spend more than $50 million at participating locations this year — those same customers are earning about $100,000 in free rewards every month."

But when speaking of the competitor, Level Up and Belly, it says this:

"A similar service, called LevelUp, claims to have about 200,000 active users, who are spending some $2 million a month on its network. And Chicago-based Belly, which has an iPad solution, recently claimed to have 1,400 merchants and more than 200,000 active users."

Why is Five Stars numbers referred to differently than the others whose numbers are "claimed" throwing doubt on those numbers. Aren't the Five Stars numbers also "claimed". Or are we to believe they were independently verified?

And lastly, from the Press release (repeated on allthingsd) "FiveStars cards are currently available at leading retailers and local merchants across the country."

Not true. It's not available "across the country" and "leading retailers" is certainly a stretch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Haven't we seen enough of these?

I'm thinking punchd, Belly, LevelUp, Plink, not to mention offerings from Groupon, foursquare... They may be able to profitably acquire businesses now, but isn't it a coinflip as to who will win in the long-term?

<comment><USER4> This looks a lot different to the others out there.

Most of the startups you mentioned are trying to retrofit the loyalty card paradigm to smartphones. I'm not sure that's the right approach - time will tell.

It looks like FiveStar simply works with a business' existing POS / magnetic scanner - and is enhanced by social / mobile. I think that's a smarter, more frictionless approach.

The winner in this space will be the one that's easiest for a business to integrate. Both on a technical level via integrating with POS systems but on a human interaction level: if you're Starbucks you can't tell 17,000 stores that they have to faff with iPhones every time a customer wants to stamp their card.

<comment><USER2> "I think that's a smarter, more frictionless approach."

One thing though about Level up. It sits right on the counter and is a big ad for Level up. The reason I know about Level Up (don't use it just mentioning) is that I walked into the local coffee shop one day (in the middle of nowhere) and it was sitting plop on the counter with a smartphone lighted up in a cool color. It totally got my attention. So there is at least some value to that hardware in that it gets you "counter space" to promote Level Up.. That's not the same as a door label or cash register label (which is flat and doesn't really stand out much) which Five Stars will probably use. Of course nothing to prevent them from offering a gizmo to do a similar thing if they want (are you listening Five Stars?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And they're looking for rockstar developers!

<comment><USER6> What does this add to the conversation?

<comment><USER7> On the front page, this article is directly above "FiveStars (YC W11) looking for software developers". Here's a screenshot for posterity: [http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tikhon/img/fivestarRockstars....](http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tikhon/img/fivestarRockstars.png)

It leads to this job ad: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332117>

<comment><USER8> There's no reference to "rockstar" in that ad. They seem to have set a somewhat high bar, but I can't see how that equates to looking for "rockstars".

<comment><USER9> They edited the title.

<comment><USER8> I see. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome company, actually the easiest reward card I've used. I use them at Rojoz in Palo Alto, give them my phone number, and the 7th wrap is free.

</comment><comment><USER11> 55 employees before their A round? Either they raised a lot of money in a 'seed' round before this or they put a bunch of their own money in. Otherwise i don't see how they funded the growth to this stage on revenue.

<comment><USER12> Knowing the space a bit, I'd guess most of the 55 people are a bunch of sales people on a commission-heavy structure, vs your 100k+stock devs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Shows FB info and email address, etc? I think this could only better if it included audio that let other customer's know the user's sexual preference, medical history, etc, etc. I think Richard Stallman is going to love this. :)

I actually like the punch card system better anyway. Besides the fact that I'm not adding yet another thing leak my identity all over the place, it is kind of more fun to have a visual representation, via the punches.

</comment><comment><USER14> Broadly: Square, Punchcard, Stampt, PlacePop (dead?), Thumbpunch, Perka, Jodesco (dead), Paycloud, Loyalli, Key Ring App, Stampfeet, CardStar (Constant Contact), Cardmobili, Front Flip, Posiq.

1) Readily available angel financing makes it hard to rise above the noise of similar startups and results in fratricide.

2) The only way to escape the pack of other startups becomes to raise more money than one's competitors in order to outspend them on marketing, PR, hiring, product, etc. It's hard to be capital efficient when there's a winner- take-most competition, given the network effects.

3) Obviously, selling to small restaurants and retailers is a difficult, expensive proposition. Easier than it was a decide ago, no question. But still a costly slog. Most startups (and there aren't many) that have managed to acquire a large number of them as customers have spent a LOT of time and/or money doing it.

EDIT: The list above is in addition to the ones mentioned below.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is Apple's Passbook a competitor?

<comment><USER16> I have a bootstrapped service coming soon which hopes it will be:

<http://stmpcrd.com>

Passbook is nothing directly - it requires third parties to make the wheels turn.

<comment><USER17> You need a different name; don't fear the vowels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> $100k rewards per month / 400k customers is 25cents of rewards per customer per month.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've seen quite a few companies in this space, and have never taken the leap. Maybe NFC will be the ticket..

</comment><comment><USER20> this looks a lot like a miami bootstrapped startup doing same thing <http://freqent.com/></comment>


Rethinking our default profile photo - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/2017/rethinking-our-default-profile-photo <comment><USER2> > people have come to associate the circle head with masculinity, and because > of this association, we felt that it was important to explore alternate head > shapes. […] As a result of these iterations, we ended with a more gender- > balanced figure. We chose grays because they feel temporary, generic, and > universal.

This approach reminds me of the Greendale mascot, the "Human Being".[1] The egg was better imo, it treated identity in a more light, not-so-serious manner; no need to think of genders, and you could even see it as a symbol of possibilities waiting to happen.

[1] [http://community- sitcom.wikia.com/wiki/Greendale_Human_Being](http://community- sitcom.wikia.com/wiki/Greendale_Human_Being)

</comment><comment> m-p-3 I think they misunderstood the issue. Changing an egg for a human shape isn't going to push new users to change their avatars now, and you can still distinguish a new user by its avatar like before.

It's just a different but common identifier. They could have gone with a random item, or even a randomized pattern.

</comment><comment><USER3> I actually really liked the egg as an icon, and I'm sad to see it go. The colors should have been rethought though. Muted colors that are universal for all accounts (instead of each account getting its own bright color) would also encourage users to upload their own photos.

I don't see the point of using an "alternative" head shape, or including shoulders in the default image. No matter how the head is shaped, it'll represent some users more than others. Using an egg avoided this issue of approximating a human shape.

</comment><comment><USER4> > We've noticed patterns of behavior with accounts that are created only to > harass others – often they don't take the time to personalize their > accounts. This has created an association between the default egg profile > photo and negative behavior, which isn't fair to people who are still new to > Twitter and haven't yet personalized their profile photo.

Seems like that's massively missing the point, no? Or at least trying to fix the wrong thing?

<comment><USER5> I thought it was missing the point too.

>> We've noticed patterns of behavior with accounts that are created only to harass others – often they don't take the time to personalize their accounts.

I'd be interested to see comparison of "eggs" and "anime avatars" to see which group is worst.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> this reads like an april fools joke! it is absolutely not an act of inclusion to move from an ultra non-specific abstract circle to a different abstract shape more reminiscent of a potato chip.</comment>


James Miao (of thesixtyone) responds (about the redesign fiasco) - <AUTHOR> http://paisley-music.blogspot.com/2010/02/james-miao-of-thesixtyone-responds.html

<comment><USER2> _i know that change sucks for some. heck, my partner, sam, had a hell of time adjusting for the first two weeks...but, at the end of the day,_

The other owner can't even navigate his own site? Maybe that's a sign...

 _i felt an obligation to continue to push the envelope for music discovery and was prepared to fail outright rather than sit comfortable with a subpar yet familiar music experience._

I don't know why he felt that the old site wasn't good for music discovery. It was clearly working for thousands of listeners and artists. People were even spending money on the old site.

</comment><comment><USER3> With the volume of feedback James is getting, it is clear that he struck a nerve with the new design, and it speaks volumes to the popularity and adoration of the people who use the site.

James clearly can see the numbers of how people are using the site now, and I assume visitors are listening more,which is the goal of the site.

Kudos to James for making bold steps and taking changes, and (I assume) listening to the numbers, not the chatter.</comment>


Bitcoin wallet validation website - <AUTHOR> http://www.antifraud.com Free service to check out a wallet holder via SMS and geolocation.  Also, it has a community database of fraudulent wallet holders. <comment><AUTHOR> It's kind of like ebay feedback. Not perfect - community driven. I think the geolocation can prevent fraud, but it can be gotten around. It is just an informational tool.

I've paused in fear many times before hitting Send on a Bitcoin transfer. I would use this for slightly more ease-of-mind.

</comment><comment><USER2> So basically anyone with a google voice number will be flagged</comment>


How Microsoft BizSpark Is Doing With Startups, and How It Can Do Better - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/05/11/how-microsoft-bizspark-is-doing-with-startups-and-how-it-can-do-better/

<comment><USER2> I've been working on a web app for the past year, and, I am a BizSpark member. Getting in to the program was a bit of a pain because a couple of their partners never got back to me.

My Dev box is Windows 7 + Python/Django courtesy of BizSpark. I use a WAPP stack (Windows, Apache, Python, PostGres) for production. And, for office stuff, I get to use Office 2007 Ultimate which is really very shiny. The MS office suite is really nice software.

Even if you're a primary Mac user, why not get the BizSpark membership and run whatever Microsoft OS you want on Parallels, just for Microsoft Office? It costs a hundred bucks after 3 years. What do you have to lose?

</comment><comment><USER3> I button holed (read: stood up and asked a question of) Dan'l Lewis, the big muckety-muck at Microsoft in charge of the program, about BizSpark. The question was: "we're a LAMP shop, what do we get out of BizSpark?" His answer: "we can help you move to Microsoft tools when you have scaling issues. That's what we did for MySpace."

More fail: <http://www.sachinagarwal.com/microsoft-bizspark-is-a-joke>

<comment><USER4> To be fair, what did you expect him to say? Your question might as well have been, "We don't use your products and have no interest in doing so. What can we get out of you offering your products for free?"

<comment><USER3> Wrong - I absolutely have an interest in using _any_ tool that would be helpful to my business. I was asking for help to identify how best to use the toolset that BizSpark provides.

My question can't possibly be the first time he's heard that; I was astonished that he didn't have a pat answer that was productive. When we have scaling issues, we'll have all the traction and revenue we'd need. BizSpark doesn't help us at that point.

<comment><USER5> there are 12 000 startups in BizSpark. most of them are doing web facing software apps. do you think they are all wrong ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lots of market-speak, but it _does_ show that Microsoft is changing from the rigid, closed organization it used to be.</comment>


Simple search. Easy access for movies - <AUTHOR> http://wheretowatch.com

<comment><USER2> Outstanding UI. Good find! h/t</comment>


Big darknet sale of 15B stolen credentials - <AUTHOR> https://utopia.fans/blog/15-billion-stolen-credentials-are-now-traded-on-the-dark-web/ <comment><AUTHOR> Be careful and secure your data in order not to lose everything</comment>


Ask HN: Getting started with hardware development? - <AUTHOR> I've seen many great guides that outline the topics needed for the foundations of software development (data structures, algorithms, etc.). There are also many great guides that focus on certain specialties as well. A lot of them are quite useful and can help you advance in your career and make an impact in the field.
I have been highly interested in learning hardware, but fail to find any guides that explain (or even outline) core concepts and topics. There are a few that are around specializing, but it's hard to follow if I don't have my foundations steady.
Do any sort of these guides exist? Note that I tried googling, but I understand it's easy to just search for things online and get lost in (on?) the wrong path.
If it helps answer the question further, I'm looking to grow my knowledge and apply it in the field, meaning I'm not looking for any simple "Hello World!" tutorials.
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> If you want some tree way model to learn, you can start:

1- studying the difference types of transistor ( bipolares -> NPN, PNP; unipolares -> MOSFET, JFET). How they works, how you can build logic with them.

2 - Understanding the simple ports ( or, and, not, xor), how they works, how they are build with transistors. Learn the method of Karnaugh.

3 - Learn some circuits like the differents type of flipflops, ULA, Mux, Demux, registers. Asynchronous and Synchronous system.

4 - Learn how state machine works, the Moore and Mealy models.

5 - Study the Data and Control Path of a CPU. You can do some dedicated circuits.

6 - Learn some Design hardware language like Verilog or VHDL, and implement your circuits from step 5.

7 - Learn the MIPS processor, and add some news instructions.

8 - Use your modified MIPS to build some microcontroller design, with PIC and others devices.

9 - You can keep walking from here...

PS.: \- From step 3 to 5 you can use a software called Logisim to build your logiv circuits . \- From step 6 to 9 you can use any VHDL/Verilog IDE. some companies has good ones like Freescale and Altera.

</comment><comment><USER3> So I see 4 different paths to learning hardware development:

1) analog electronic projects. 2) microcontroller projects. 3) fgpa projects. 4) some combination of the above.

Understanding FGPAs/Digital Logic/Basic Computer Architecture will help you better appreciate using a computer.

Analog electronics are the most foreign to me, but they are foundational, and it's really amazing to see people using analog electronics for computation.

Microcontroller projects are great because they can bridge your existing software experience with basic analog electronics and systems.

I recommend you start with one of these paths, for example a simple microcontroller project and then migrate to learning about digital logic and FPGAs. I don't have any specific resources to share, but hopefully this comment helps, and my apologies if it doesn't.

<comment><USER4> I agree with jrowley, and here are some resources I can recommend. These are college textbooks, not websites.

First, some EE. Horowitz & Hill's "The Art of Electronics" is the gold standard.

[https://artofelectronics.net/](https://artofelectronics.net/)

Then, Hennessey and Patterson's "Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface (ARM edition)",

[https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-ARM- Arch...](https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-ARM- Architecture/dp/0128017333)

...or Tannenbaum's "Stuctured Computer Organization"

[https://www.amazon.com/Structured-Computer-Organization- Andr...](https://www.amazon.com/Structured-Computer-Organization-Andrew- Tanenbaum/dp/0132916525)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Last December I started being interested in hardware development, and experimentation. I initially started with Arduino boards, but almost immediately jumped-ship to the ESP8266 devices - because they come with on- board WiFi support, and they're very very cheap.

For me it had been years since I'd touched a soldering iron, and even then the things I'd done had been very basic. But I've had a lot of fun wiring up sensors to the devices, writing software that works in the tiny amount of space available (though much more space than I had when I was first exposed to programming, on a 48k Spectrum back in the early eighties.)

You're not specific about the type of hardware, but I found this "IoT" style development pretty well documented, and fun. You don't need many parts, you don't need much time, and if you can code in C already you're not having to learn too many new things all at once.

Right now I have a bunch of projects I made around the place. Some more useful than others. I expect I'll stop soon, but it was a fun diversion and no doubt I'll get back to it in the future.

</comment><comment><USER6> To get started from hobby perspective, you can start with online electronics courses at Instructables[1].

If you are looking for something more academic to start with, check Computer organization/architecture and Embedded systems courses at [2] and [3]. UT Austin's Embedded Systems course at Edx.org [4] is also good place to start.

[1] [https://www.instructables.com/classes/tagged/electronics/](https://www.instructables.com/classes/tagged/electronics/)

[2] [https://github.com/Developer-Y/cs-video- courses](https://github.com/Developer-Y/cs-video-courses)

[3] [https://github.com/Developer-Y/engineering-video- courses](https://github.com/Developer-Y/engineering-video-courses)

[4] [https://www.edx.org/course/embedded-systems-shape-world- utau...](https://www.edx.org/course/embedded-systems-shape-world-utaustinx- ut-6-10x)

</comment><comment><USER7> If you want to build your own CPU, you should learn about Hardware Description Languages like Verilog. There are free simulators out there that you can play with like Icarus Verilog.

</comment><comment><USER8> For fundamental electronic circuits MIT 6.002 course is available on edx if you have a calc background. In any case original lectures are very worthwhile with Anant Agarwal. Get a feel for fundamental concepts from youtube videos by Eugene Khutoryansky If you want to share with son or daughter as crazy as it sounds, snap circuits and other electronic project kits like these get you breadboarding. Then arduino and raspberry pi projects like the other good people suggest.

</comment><comment><USER9> What kind of hardware are you looking to produce? If its fairly simple stuff with a single micro controller, a handful of sensors, and maybe a little I/O then I'd point you towards Arduino. It might not the be most elegant solution for hardware, but it'll be a good stepping stone to get your feet wet and see if you want to really pursue it.

</comment><comment><USER10> CMU's Intro to Physical Computing course materials provide an excellent jumping off point:

[https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/16-223/f2017/text/index.html](https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/16-223/f2017/text/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> jrowley's comment is a good start. In addition one could also suggest digital design for asics, but then I guess the thing is you have to either be at a university or work with tools from vendors like Cadence or Synopsys. But there is a free software called alliance which is supposed to work with ubuntu (I have never used it yet though... here it is [https://soc- extras.lip6.fr/en/alliance-abstract-en/](https://soc- extras.lip6.fr/en/alliance-abstract-en/)).

Maybe with the power of the internet we can create a guide :-)</comment>


MIPS I7200 Breaks the RISC Chain - <AUTHOR> http://www.eejournal.com/article/mips-i7200-breaks-the-chain/ <comment><USER2> Variable length instructions, so long as they're easy to decode, have always been present in the range of ISAs commonly called "RISC" and this new one from MIPS is no different. Except for the encoding it's basically the same thing MIPS has always been.

<comment><USER3> Yep. RISC-V has had easy to decode variable length instructions from day one in the compressed ISA extension. The base user-mode ISA has a set of simple encoding rules for variable-length instructions from 16b to 192b in 16b increments, and room to grow beyond that should the need arise. The current set of extensions only use 32b and 16b encoding space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Variable length instructions are not un-RISC, nor is macro-op fusion. Sure it makes for great clickbait, but nothing here indicates a new break from RISC. MIPS is already un-RISC in more real ways.

</comment><comment><USER5> Now if only there was somebody besides Microchip making low-cost dev kits for these things, maybe we could have some fun and get a MIPS revival.

I can get ARM microcontroller boards for $10 - $20 from ST, Microchip (nee Atmel), SiLabs, etc. More powerful ARMs in any flavor of Pi that I want.

Where do I buy a low-end interAptive or microAptive board? The Creator CI20 is super interesting, but no on-board debugger included. The LinkIt MT7688 modules don't even bring out the JTAG pins.

<comment><USER6> PIC32MZ are MIPS based, not quite what you want but close.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The PIC32MZ is a neat MIPS microcontroller (if you're able to tolerate the MPLab Xpress IDE). Unfortunately the cheapest PIC32 board they offer is the DM320001 at $50. I picked up a SAMD10 "Xplained mini" for $9 from Digikey, and one can get sub-$2 STM32F103 boards from AliExpress.

Arguably the Cortex-M0+-based D10 isn't really comparable to the PIC32, but that's sort of the point. No Arduino-sized community is going to develop around an architecture with a $50 minimum entry point... Maybe I should stop complaining about it and try to fix it :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even with an adblocker, the site is unusable.

<comment><USER8> You just have to take it a bit farther and block everything by default except the HTML using something like uMatrix. It's often a pain in the ass when I do want to see more than the text (and of course some sites require javascript to even get the text) but most of the time I just want to read the text and combined with Reader mode it's even formatted well, often better than the original site, for my tastes anyway.</comment></comment>


Pros and Cons of Redis-Resque and SQS - <AUTHOR> http://eric.lubow.org/2012/architecture/pros-and-cons-of-redis-resque-and-sqs/ <comment><USER2> I looked pretty hard at systems to do parallel batch jobs.

One thing I looked at was to store intermediate results in Amazon S3 and control the execution of job steps with SQS.

Although the system couldn't do everything Hadoop does, it worked for a wide range of problems and had the desirable quality that it could transparently parallelize multiple processing phases when it was possible.

I went with Hadoop, however, because I can run a Hadoop cluster in the office or in the cloud, and that's a big advantage.</comment>


Google Calendar Is Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-calendar-down-not-working-loading-error-404-outage-a8963851.html <comment><USER2> Here's the Incident page from Google: [https://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&sid=2&iid=cc...](https://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&sid=2&iid=cc21ebe3962430b2e4ae2b52e3dde98f)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this really worthy of a heavy article page with ads and a nojs-broken layout?</comment>


Gates and Jobs look into the future of personal computing (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Z7eal4uXI

<comment><USER2> I had no idea they were intertwined so throughly in each others past; I knew they were, but not quite that much.

More interestingly, I enjoy the jokes the make to/about each other. And it's great how (somewhere in the beginning _episodes_ ) Steve cut Bill off while he was telling a story and said "Here, just let me tell it," (or something like that). Very old couple like. Very amusing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I really enjoyed seeing that Gates is still super smart and really enthusiastic about the innovation that's happening right now. Makes me wish he was still running the show at Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note this has 11 parts and runs more than an hour. It's great though.

Steve Jobs his relationship with Bill Gates: "I think of most things in life as either a Bob Dylan or Beatles song, but there's that one line in that one Beatles Song. You and I have memories that longer than the road that stretches out ahead, and that's clearly true here.

Some advice to startups in video #11 about 1 minute in.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> As our focus has shifted to the web in the past decade, I think a lot of us (myself included) have convinced ourselves that the future lies completely inside the web browser.

Hearing Gates address the issue, and combining that with what we're seeing now with mobile and touch-driven computing has really convinced me otherwise.

I see this interview as a call-to-arms from our heroes to gear up for this paradigm shift. They've gotten us this far; and now it's up to us, the developers, to really drive it home.

</comment><comment><USER4> I enjoyed hearing them talk about tablets, given that was ~3 years before the iPad launch. (I believe most of that conversation occurred in part 5)

<comment><USER3> The tablet bill gates is talking about is the tablet pc, and I think the tablet pc editions of XP were shipping in 2001/2.

Something like this: <http://shop.lenovo.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/x-series- tablet>

Ink is microsoft's handwriting recognition software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The philosophy of Steve Jobs is a healthy one:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCvLTlQWT6A&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCvLTlQWT6A&feature=related#t=02m20s)

(They speak about startups and devices a few minutes later)

</comment><comment><USER6> Great interview. Here's a link to the full interview and transcript:

       http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/d5-gates-jobs-interview/</comment>


Why you expect too much from open source - <AUTHOR> http://www.leonmergen.com/business/2015/03/18/why-you-expect-too-much-from-open-source.html

<comment><USER2> I think this article hurts itself by assuming a pure market scenario: different firms are competing with each other, some adopting an open source strategy, while others pursue a closed source strategy.

That's not what's happening, however: open source doesn't just involve the market-based production of goods (e.g. databases), but also elements of non- market (i.e. voluntary) production.

Mixing this up with for-profit business models has a number of side effects, which the author ignores. Look at Red Hat and Canonical: they are market competitors, yet they contribute to the same Linux kernel and system.

If one of the distributors and service providers dies, a much more smooth transition can happen to it's more successful competitors, since they are using variants of the same tool.

This is exactly the sort of properties I'd be looking for in infrastructure technology - which is the exact kind of thing that open source has become omnipresent in.

So: no, I don't think putting a lot of emphasis on open source is bad.</comment>


IP Agreements - Safe to launch a startup while still working? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> This is something Ive been wondering about for several months now. I figured the group here might have some useful advice.

Like most other tech companies, the company I work for required I sign an Intellectual Property agreement stating that any ideas or work that I produce while an employee is property of the company. So this clause would include any work related to a startup. I know, this really sucks.

PG talks about this in several essays. Basically what it sounds like is that if there is ANY indication that you started work on a startup while under an IP agreement, VCs and acquirers will simply not touch you. Has any one else found this to be the case?

From what it looks like so far, my options are:

1) Jump ship and not look back. This puts big financial strain on us though as we don't have funding yet.

2) Leave as an employee, and rejoin as a part time contractor without signing an IP agreement. This would pay the bills and rent in the early stages but would probably be pretty draining physically. I also lose my unvested shares in the company but meh.

3) The CEO will sign a document releasing our specific idea from the IP Agreement. Has anyone heard of this happening with success before??

Or we could probably just start working in secret and building the product, but this is probably not a good idea because we wouldn't have early customer feedback. I definitely believe in "release early, release often". Or an easy solution would be to get accepted into YC but I know chances of that are pretty slim :(

Any advice is appreciated.

<comment><USER2> Typically, employers just don't care about ideas that are outside their line of business. After all, if I come up with a great social networking site but my employer is a financial software company, stealing my social networking IP will just be a distraction from their business activities. They're _worse_ off for taking ownership of the IP.

 _Do_ tell your employer what you're doing and clear it with them. Aside from being the honest thing to do, it also sets you up to get formal legal permission. If they're not willing to do so, you know that immediately and can weigh your options from there, including quitting or giving up the startup.

In some cases, your employer may even give you money, advice, and customers. I once worked for a company whose CEO was the former CTO of Cybersmith (the gaming cafe company that went bust around 1999). She came up with an idea that was useful for Cybersmith's business but was not something Cybersmith was willing to put resources into. Cybersmith became her first (and only, it turned out) customer and gave them significant resources to fund development.

"3) The CEO will sign a document releasing our specific idea from the IP Agreement. Has anyone heard of this happening with success before??"

This happens more often than you think. The most prominent example is Apple Computer - Steve Wozniak was on HP's payroll when it was founded, and needed HP to sign away their rights to the Apple I. One of my cofounders is in the process of getting a similar release from Sony Entertainment, and I'll probably need something similar from my employer (I have verbal permission already).

<comment><USER3> agree with above, and just went through this a week or two ago. i got a letter from my company saying they have no ownership stake in what i'm doing (an extra complication was that i'm working part time in the office and part time on my idea as part of an agreement we struck.) it cost me like $1,000 out of pocket to get an attorney and a letter drafted saying my employer has no "right, title, or interest" in my new venture and related patents/applications/copyrights/etc., but in the grand scheme of things it's a no-brainer to make sure the IP around the idea/new business is clean.

if you have questions about this shoot me an email at houston at alum.mit.edu ... it was a pretty straightforward process.

-drew

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Take a look at your employment agreement. It should have a clause in there detailing exactly how the IP is appropriated. Some companies' agreements say that they own ALL the IP while you're working for them, even the work done in after-work hours. Some say that only the work done on their computers belongs to them. Some agreements are ambiguous on purpose so they can come after you if you leave and they think you came up with stuff while working for them (which is very common... you see something your current customers need and you decide to go solo). Also, where do your customers come from? Are they the same as your employer's customers? They'll come after you. Are you competing with your employer? They'll come after you! Have you signed a non-compete? If you're in a similar/same area as your current employer, they'll come after you.

Anyway, this can become a huge mess... talk to your lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER5> IP agreements are the least of your worries. They don't matter that much and are really really hard to enforce. Basically it matters if you steal some kind of trade secret of a lot of existing clients/contacts.

Not having enough time to properly do your startup should be your main concern.

<comment><USER3> this is dangerous advice -- regardless of whether or not enforcement on these agreements is likely or possible, you will spook investors/acquirers if you don't do your due diligence in this area and don't have the necessary documents to prove ownership of your IP.

-drew

<comment><USER5> Aren't you the guy that emailed me? Sorry I wasn't able to meet up with you at startup school.

I still don't think its that dangerous of advice. Sure, if somebody is working in a similar industry, doing actual work on the start up in the work place, then that'd be a problem. Businesses often do have large portfolios of IP, many having not much to do with their business, but I don't think somebody is going to have a problem working on something totally different, at home, on their own machines, on their own time.

<comment><USER3> right -- but if your employment docs say, for example, that your employer owns all IP you create _including_ stuff you do on your own time and out of the office (yes, a draconian clause, but not that uncommon!), you can be in big trouble if your startup takes off and your former employer is legally entitled to (i.e. you don't own) the IP you created -- either your employer can try to lay claim to what you've built or your investors/acquirer will find out during the due diligence process and not move forward as a result.

that said, i'm not a lawyer, and i'm sure others can provide related nightmare stories -- but everything i've heard indicates it's really better to not screw around, and to have a paper trail indicating that you own your IP.

-drew

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In California at least there are really good laws about this. No matter what your contract says, it's important to remember that you cannot sign away your rights.

The key is to not utilize _any_ employer resources. That means no using the company-provided laptop, servers, office space, bandwidth, and especially time (even lunch).

The other way to protect yourself is by keeping a work journal. Blogs are nice, but it's best if it's handwritten and dated. This is what will save you if it ever ends up in court.

Obviously I'm about as far from a lawyer as it gets, but this is what I know.</comment>


Slipping out of the Honeymoon Phase. Waking up Scared.  - <AUTHOR> http://about.retickr.com/blog/2011/10/spending-a-lot-of-money-user-retention-slipping-out-of-the-honeymoon-phase-waking-up-scared-oh-shit-this-is-real <comment><USER2> "Basically, we are spending my entire life-time earnings every four weeks"

What the hell, did I seriously just read this? So this guy hasn't even made $18,000 in income in his entire life yet he is funded for a startup at approximately $216,000 per year. Thats great that he can get funding given his complete lack of real work experience but thats just a bit unsettling and scary, are we really going down the dotcom bust road again?

I'm similar in age (26) and have made well over 18,000 in my lifetime earnings (anyone who works as even the juniorest of junior dev's should blow that number out of the water in half a year even), work as a dev and I don't think I would even dream of taking any amount of money in funding anytime soon, what ever happened to working for a few years, learning from more experienced peers and then maybe trying it on your own (once you actually have some real financial stability of your own)?

I realize everyone thinks they have the next big idea but if you don't have solid dev experience (without any oversight) you are going to mess up on something, probably something that matters (and won't be realized until later down the road) and this is best prevented by working with more experienced developers early on

<comment><USER3> We think that funding young people and their ideas is an important thing to do. And frankly, $216k is a reasonable amount for what retickr is trying to accomplish (cutting the noise out of social media overload). Will they fail? probably. Is it the job of venture capitalists to fund that failure? We damn sure think so.

Is $216k a year a smarter initial investment than $41m for an experienced team of entrepreneurs? (see Color). Or $30m for a wiki based company that pivots into gossip? (see Wetpaint).

For the money that was invested in Color (and any number of other startups run by "experienced" management teams), we could theoretically start 80 retickrs (assuming 2 years of burn rate for retickr). Or over 1,000 YC companies.....

Retickr is making mistakes, some of which we, their investors, warned them against. But a good investor doesn't dictate to entrepreneurs, we mentor and guide. If we wanted to be the CEO of a startup, we would do that. We're trying to leverage our experience. And assuming a de facto role as CEO at each of our portfolio companies is the exact antithesis of scaling. At least until we figure out cloning or consciousness replication....#ss11

Btw, thanks to the whole community here, you're doing an amazing job of creating a healthy environment where crazy people like Travis who are willing to put themselves out there in the open can get honest and productive feedback. Kudos

<comment><USER2> I just look at it from an engineering perspective, having worked for some companies where the code base was just "hacked" together, in an unmaintainable way and I just sometimes think it would be better for the tech community as a whole if everyone and their mother didn't try to start a company with little experience ( a few years down the line, sure go start one, no problems with that), sure they may have some minor success but it just exacerbates bad development practices and these young companies usually hire more unexperienced developers and the effect just snowballs. I am talking from my own experiencing working with "post-startup" companies that were a few years old to where I am just glad I have continued learning on my own (reading online, reading books, etc) as anti-patterns and bad practices that can occur without experienced dev's on a team can really cause problems.

In the interest of full disclosure, before I got really into software development / programming, I too had a lot of ideas, wanted to start my own companies (even tried to do so with some small ecommerce stores, etc) but overall I'm glad I didn't succeed with that because it forced me to learn development and realize just how hard and involved making a scalable web app really is and if I ever go on to make a real serious attempt at creating a new company (not for a few years at least) I think I would be in a better position to make a real contribution and make something that is technically sound and viable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looking at your team (<http://about.retickr.com/retickr-team/>) it seems rather top-heavy. Two people have the title of "Co-Founder and Vice President" ... VP of what? Additionally, there's a CTO, yourself the CEO, a sysadmin, plus two software engineers. It's no wonder your burn rate is so high. This seems like the kind of app that would get developed by two "devops" kind of people.

Some comments on your home page: it's being dominated by a screenshot that's impossible to read and doesn't convey what the heck it does. There are a couple of teaser bullet-points-in-boxes that gives a high-level view, but I think the home page would really benefit from an in-your-face description conveying the clear _benefits_. At a minimum, start out by replacing the static screenshot with the video that is immediately clickable. However, this is speaking to user acquisition and doesn't address the problem you state of your 8% user retention rate.

I haven't used your app, but from the description it looks like it doesn't solve a hair-on-fire problem. The problem is that people have information overload. There are only so many things a person can follow that they quickly get overwhelmed trying to keep up. Your app looks to just throw it in their face which only highlights the fact that they can't keep up, and it does so in a distracting fashion by continuously animating the information they already have a difficult time reading. In a way, it sets their hair on fire.

A better value proposition would be to solve the information overload problem by only showing them news that is valuable in a manner that is not interruptive to their workflow. Trivially, this could be done when a piece of news is liked/+1'd/tweeted beyond a certain weighted threshold or for the infrequent news that comes from sources the user specifies as being important, like a friend's blog that is updated a few times a month. Something to the effect of "You only have so many hours in the day, but there are dozens of news sources you'd like to be aware of. Who has time to follow every single news item? Retickr lets you follow as many news sources as you want, then gives you a summary of the top three things you need to be aware of every hour. Then, just click to read the full story. If you have time to kill, our easy to use app lets you browse additional stories by source, topic, author, and many other criteria."

<comment><USER5> I absolutely appreciate your input. We have some major work to get done, and your advice provides some great directions. Personalization and delivering a user only the news that matters to them is our goal. This is great feedback, please keep it coming. Brian

<comment><USER6> If you are interested in feedback, had a similar reaction. Many people are now more interested in reducing distraction, not increasing it. Maybe you could find a way to do that, blocking and batching feeds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Your jobs page brags that you have 14 servers on your site. WTF? I've run 15+ hardcore porn totally dynamic websites taking millions of hits on just 3 servers and two of those were just for redundancy! Seriously, I've never heard of your company and you are burning through that much cash? I'm sorry, but this really just sounds like a case of 'doing it wrong'. It really sounds like time to hit the reset button before you are completely broke.

<comment><USER8> This got me looking at the careers page as well. "really nice office" isn't one where you can't stretch your legs forward without banging them to a fellow employee. Seriously, you have space, use it wisely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I understand that you are located where you are and that is how you ended up with the lampost group but I have to say that I don't see in any way how these investors and this incubator is the correct support group that you need for what you are doing.

If you look at the experience of the leadership of Lampost it simply doesn't appear knowledgeable in things that would be important to a company such as yours. Read the bios. It seems like a "me too" from a bunch of guys that saw The Social Network and decided to give investing in internet startups a whirl.

<http://www.lamppostgroup.com/lamp-post-leadership/>

Look at the other companies that they have invested in and you can clearly see what their focus is on.

<http://www.lamppostgroup.com/company-roster/>

While there is probably little you can do about this now this is something for others to keep in mind before they take an investment and end up waking up scared.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'll give you just two sentences of advice:

Cut your burn-rate until you've figured out what it is that you are doing. You will need that money badly later on.

<comment><USER11> Please change the huge PNG's on your site into JPEGs of the correct size. I shouldn't be sitting waiting for thumbnail screen shots to download. A similar thing happens on the blog gallery section - you have huge images, that just display as thumbnails, re-compress/re-size and reduce your bandwidth.

Looking through your site you really need to spend more time on your core product. You have loads of pages about who you are, your office, your mentors, yada yada yada. I see more content about your company than your product at the moment. Also, most/all of your top nav opens new tabs (on the homepage), this is just annoying. You seem to be running two sites, one of which appears to be just a fancy homepage (www. & about.).

As others have said, you seriously need to address your server count/infrastructure. It's just throwing money away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > I just found out yesterday how much money we are spending.

This strikes me as a stunningly stupid thing for a _CEO_ to admit to in public, and should give any potential investors pause.

</comment><comment><USER13> There will be lots more criticism here. Either way, thanks for sharing the story in such an honest and complete way. Writing like this is rare in the startup world, and it's extremely positive to have around.

</comment><comment><USER14> > What can I do today that will help justify the eighty-hour work weeks that > Adam and Josh have been putting in for the last six months?

What is everybody else on your roster doing? Cut some fat. And if your devs are pulling 80h weeks, why are you watching TV at night?

</comment><comment><USER15> My question is just how the heck have you only made 18k over 10 years of working. That's only 56 weeks of full time 8/hr work. I don't get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Part-time work at a grocery store for years, and years, and years... Some retail work is thrown into that time span as well. $8/hr is high-living! I was making $6.50/hr at The Fresh Market.

<comment><USER16> Please tell me you're joking. If you're a good programmer, you could move to San Francisco and have a six figure salary within a week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How do you have a burn rate of only $18,500/mo with seven (apparently) full- time employees? Is that burn rate net of some kind of revenue, or are your seven employees making an average annual salary of about $31K each? Even for TN that seems awfully low.

As a point of reference, in SV a ballpark OPEX for 7 employees in a startup would be $80-90K.

<comment><USER18> $18,500 burn rate is their monthly negative cash flow, not necessarily total monthly expenditures.

<comment><AUTHOR> We live _extremely_ cheaply, even for Tennessee standards. We all share a house and play limbo with the poverty line... A couple of our developers are part-time guys that have helped when needed, we currently have a full-time staff of five.

<comment><USER19> Wait, "a couple" of your developers are part-time? According to your team page you have 7 employees. It looks like 3 of those are technical (less than half... that alone is astounding), so if "a couple" of those three are part- time, that means you only have a single full-time technical employee, unless the full-time guy is the Systems Administrator, in which case you have zero full-time developers.

Sorry, but that seems like a pretty big warning sign for a software startup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> " _Take comfort in the fact that the poor start-up founder and the rich corporate CEO both go home at the end of the day, eat dinner, watch TV, and go to bed._ "

Dinner, maybe.

The other two are not guaranteed.

</comment><comment><USER21> Curious about the 14 servers mentioned on your careers page -- why so much hardware to support only 325 active users?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have built out infrastructure to support about 50,000 users. Premature? Sure, but fairly reasonable for the price. Most of the server capacity consists of our Cassandra cluster which we are using to personalize user content...

<comment><USER22> Is there a particular reason why you decided to purchase 14 physical servers instead of spinning up virtual instances (or even co-located servers) for easy scaling? As you've discovered, it's hard to estimate what kind of load you'll need to handle, and the up-front cost is impossible to recover.

Also, I'd recommend spending some time looking at your architecture, as you should be able to handle 50,000 active users with a lot less metal. The extra infrastructure can often be more expensive than a well-designed architecture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Comforting words from pg...

If you start a startup, you'll probably fail. Most startups fail. It's the nature of the business. But it's not necessarily a mistake to try something that has a 90% chance of failing, if you can afford the risk. Failing at 40, when you have a family to support, could be serious. But if you fail at 22, so what? If you try to start a startup right out of college and it tanks, you'll end up at 23 broke and a lot smarter. Which, if you think about it, is roughly what you hope to get from a graduate program.

</comment><comment><USER24> One of the most comforting realizations is when you find out no one else really knows what they're doing either and that all startup founders are on the edge.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hi there.... I went ahead and downloaded and installed the app. Really had trouble with the popup agree to terms and conditions thing. Had to force quit several times before I succeeded in registering.

Tried the wizard selecting technology news but when the ticker started, it was filled with stuff from Fox News and other stuff that is irritating more than informing.

What I was looking for, and hoping for, was a simple ticker for sites that I am interested in, such as this site, slashdot, NYtimes and WSJ technology SECTIONS, etc.

Even when I deleted my playlist, stories from 'The Beast' flowed across the screen. In sum, I had no sense that I was in control of your application. I could see myself using such a feed--if it did what I wanted--while relaxing, but in it's current form.....

Best of luck with this! I do hope you persevere. I'd suggest completely rethinking how the USER can drive this thing.

...and you might want to add a direct download for those of us who don't always want to log into apple's app store just to try something like this. Almost quit at that point.

<comment><USER26> seconded.. I was pretty eager to use this app, as it looks like exactly what i'm looking for.. but dealing with the Apple store download BS made me say, screw it..

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think your landing page could use a reasonable facsimile of your product running across the top of the screen. I appreciate it might need to be in Flash or in HTML5, but it might bump your conversion rate if your main selling point, "stuff, in front of you, now," is clearly set out on the landing page.

But second thought, haven't we already seen PointCast crash and burn? Not sure if I have the name right, but I'm thinking of the push technology that was such a buzz word in the original internet bubble.

<comment><USER28> And Chirpscreen already did Pointcast for social: [http://m.techcrunch.com/2007/10/18/remember-pointcast- meet-c...](http://m.techcrunch.com/2007/10/18/remember-pointcast-meet- chirpscreen/)

<comment><AUTHOR> We are _hoping_ to be the next evolutionary step. Pointcast did news. Chirpscreen did social. We will (hopefully in a couple months) do real-time personalized content, which would include news and social..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Quick feedback, on the product - rather than the blog post.

Easy download & quick install.

I am news junkie who works for a large offline & online publisher who needs to keep tabs on stuff as it happens.

The idea of a ticker is interesting, but the usability of a scrolling feed is tough for me - I'd much rather see a series of headlines pop up, and disappear, than constant across-screen motion.

There's no way I could leave this on all day with that motion across the screen - but I could if the UI was less distracting.

Just my 10 cents - good luck with your product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the product feedback graupel. We all feel like we are on the right track and the product has come a long way in the last six months let alone the last several weeks. We feel like we have a better understanding of what our users want now and hopefully retickr round two will provide more value..

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Cut your costs down to just rent plus servers. Keep only the technical people plus yourself. Have everyone work for free in exchange for equity until you see traction. The ones that believe in the company and the idea enough will do it.

<comment><USER31> Have everyone work for free? That's a quick way to lose good people.

<comment><USER30> Make one or two of them co-founders. Until you see traction, you have no choice but to keep the team extremely small and bootstrap like crazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The lack of a professional graphic designer in a lead role is a fatal oversight. It's the reason your user experience is lacking and the reason your website sucks.

</comment><comment><USER33> Big button for Mac download. No button for Windows download. Perhaps that's why you have so few users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha yea I would agree and I am a Windows user myself. One thing that we were told very early on by our investors is to focus on one platform and one platform only in the beginning. Our current client has changed so much over the last six months that it would have been a monumental waste of time to be developing Windows alongside it. Our Mac client should be stable (design-wise) relatively soon and then if we gain some form of market acceptance proving our concept we will move on to Windows and mobile development.

<comment><USER34> Having learned a bit from your article, I figured I would check out retickr even though I had no idea what it was. When I looked at your site I realized that just the other day I was wishing I knew of a program that did exactly what yours does. Unfortunately I enjoy video games too much to justify buying a Mac. I agree that it seems like a really good idea to support just one platform until you are established. I just happen to think that you picked the wrong one.

Don't get me wrong, I like OS X and more than a few different versions of Linux/Unix, but that doesn't change the fact that the overwhelming majority of home users run windows.

I sincerely hope that things start to click for you in the near future. I'll probably check retickr out in VMware or something. Good luck.

<comment><USER35> This. Don't develop the product you want - develop the product users can access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> You need to hire a good designer.</comment>