Android: The Land That Python Forgot - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/pyconca/android-the-land-that-python-forgot-christopher-neugebauer <comment><USER3> Ohai!

I wrote the talk, and just want to let you know that you can _watch_ it over at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p77BR6e1uoo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p77BR6e1uoo)

\--Chris

<comment><USER4> Thanks for transcribing the talk onto the slides. Most people don't, and just post their mostly-useless slides.

<comment><USER5> Yes. Actually, when I saw it was just slides I simply closed the tab because they're most often useless, not adapted to presenting something on the web.

After seeing your comment I went back to it, and indeed, the talk is there, which was unexpected and great.

<comment><USER3> Glad you enjoyed it – I find I present better if I have notes. Glad they have extra utility for you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can replace Python in Ruby or Lua for the most part and also Android with iOS. Dynamic languages aren't yet a big deal and I think it's because they don't bind well or give you a significantly better developer experience than Objective-C or Java on these platforms do.

RubyMotion is probably the closest I've seen to making a language like Ruby or Python a very compelling mobile developer experience while maintaining the end user experience.

That basically means you need to write a Python compiler for iOS or Android to make it compelling, which means adding type checking and at some point developers start asking why they aren't just using Java in the first place...

<comment><USER7> If you think Python is a worse Java then there is something important you have missed.

<comment><USER8> If you think that programming languages are strictly worse or better than others on a linear scale, then there is something important you have missed.

<comment><USER9> Always use the correct tools for the Job. Pragmatism wins

<comment><USER10> thumbs up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It isn't that Python forgot Android, or Python developers don't care about mobile. It's that Google decided to base Android on the JVM and make Java the primary language for developing on the platform. There's nothing Python could have done about that.

<comment><USER11> One very prominent point in those slides is that Android is _not_ based on the JVM, which complicates things for plenty of things that expect Java on JVM instead of Java on Dalvik (e.g. Jython).

<comment><USER3> Yup. If we had Jython, this talk wouldn't have needed to have been written.

And I'd probably be working to improve Jython as we speak.

<comment><USER12> I wonder if this new ART system shipped with 4.4 changes anything - <USER2> like Python and Go so maybe they'd have them available as languages that target the runtime?

PS. See you at LCAU2014!

<comment><USER13> ART is an install-time compiler from Dalvik bytecode to native code. It improves CPU, RAM, and battery usage, but still requires whatever code is run through it to be converted to Dalvik bytecode.

If we don't currently have a way to run Python on a Dalvik JIT, then we don't currently have a away to run Python on ART.

<comment><USER12> Why did they go to an install-time optimizer instead of inventing something better than Dalvik?

<comment><USER13> Well, continuing to run legacy apps efficiently is almost certainly a requirement. Presumably it's also a requirement for them that the Java semantics easily and efficiently map to their program representation.

An AoT compiler instantly makes everyone's favorite Android apps start faster, and many of them run faster, without having to wait for (sometimes defunct) publishers to re-compile the apps.

A static single assignment representation that matches the Java semantics, such as Michael Franz's SafeTSA, would be better than Dalvik bytecode if they're going to do install-time generation of native code.

In any case, I hope they continue to promote architecture-independent distribution formats for apps and libraries. I've said for a while that I think compiling directly to native code is going to eventually be treated like we now treat hand-written assembly... a last resort for small pieces of code that need speed and have been found to not be efficiently served by more abstract tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd point out that Python was the preferred high-level language at pre-MS Nokia. There was Python for S60 for a long time, even before either iOS or Android existed. More recently Nokia made new Python bindings for Qt, PySide, to be used on Maemo.

<comment><USER15> Could it be the reason Symbian was slow and eventually failed? Were they interpreting or compiling Python?

<comment><USER14> > Could it be the reason Symbian was slow and eventually failed?

No, and no. I don't think Nokia ever shipped any significant amounts of Python code themselves.

> Were they interpreting or compiling Python?

It was the standard CPython interpreter.

<comment><USER16> A friend of mine was playing with python and opengl es on series 60 phones (symbian) - and it was completely fine.

[Even with pretty unoptimised python].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To me, it's more that Android forgot to include other languages. But maybe it was intentional? You have no choice but to write drivers for the phones special hardware, but you don't have to write bindings for all those drivers to other languages ... only the ones (one?) you chose to support.

I'm not as familiar with iOS ... is there broad language support for that OS?

<comment><USER18> Language support has nothing to do with drivers... All the hardware drivers have C or C++ interfaces.

<comment><USER17> And every C/C++ interface requires a set of language bindings that allow you to call them from say ... Python (if you want to call that Language supported). If the core language runs on a device but you're constantly calling native code, why not write in the language that's considered native?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The first half of the deck is about what a smartphone is. You should cut those out and get to the subject matter.

<comment><USER20> Lots of times you are talking to people who have been writing enterprise/web stuff for decades and never dipped into mobile. Especially at a conference for a language that is pretty much not on mobile at all. I think it was appropriate.

<comment><USER3> The talk was at mostly web developers. The second and third parts of the talk were about why the web doesn't cut it as a platform.

Part 1 was there to lay the groundwork. Basic? Maybe, but it's necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just point out, this talk mentions: kivy -- A python kit for a portable, touch-focused UI that works on Android as well.

I used to follow it initially but noticed the project seems to have slowed down. There haven't been as many releases lately. Anyone have more info on why that might be?

<comment><USER22> There have been a few dozen commits in the last week. It may have slowed down because the project reached many of it's objectives?

<comment><USER21> That makes sense, nothing wrong with that. I was thinking major refactoring or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Jessica McKellar touched upon this in her keynote at Kiwipycon this year ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1a4Jbjc- vU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1a4Jbjc-vU)).

Another area of deficiency in the Python ecosystem that concerns me is the lack of any client-side web development story. Languages like Clojure and Kotlin clearly recognise the importance of this, yet as far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be much interest in projects like Pyjs.

</comment><comment><USER24> Thought-provoking presentation, well done.

When I think about most Android apps I use (and especially my toddler daughter's games), I can't imagine 95% of them need the faster execution speed of optimized Java or NDK code. IOW, they could have been written in Python and enjoy:

1\. Faster development 2\. Portability across devices

</comment><comment><USER25> What about performance? Seems one of the biggest concerns on mobile devices is to achieve high performance with low overhead.

What kind of penalty comes with a separate python runtime?

<comment><USER3> You're running the Python interpreter as a native executable, so it's roughly comparable to Dalvik.

If you want performance, write it in C, optimise it. That's what the NDK is for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I was wondering about the NDK here. How much of what the SDK provides is also provided by the NDK? Could you do UI stuff by building a Python extension around the NDK? (Probably not, since it would've been done already?)

<comment><USER27> Practically nothing - this is a common question we get from programmers that come from other platforms. You have OpenGL/OpenAL and that's mostly it.

The main difference is that most other platforms run in native code and then VM languages bind to that native code (e.g. Python/Java calling out to syscalls, WINAPI functions, etc...) while Android OS actually is written and runs IN Java. As soon as basic Linux kernel is up, Dalvik is started and THEN the rest the OS (UI compositor, audio manager, process/activity manager, SurfaceFlinger, etc.) is loaded as Java classes. Android is basically Java code that calls out to native code for acceleration (like most Python libraries) not the other way around as you're used to from other platforms. Think of Android more like "boot to Java" than a Linux distribution.

Which means there are no native calls to be called - whole Android API is a Java API. So if you want to implement another language or write an app in C, you need to still have a JNI bridge between your language/code and Dalvik which lets you call Android to draw UI on screen, access data about filesystem, system services, schedule service startups, add icon to launcher, show notifications, ... anything really.

This is also probably the biggest reason why we're not seeing other languages on Android - binding Python and Java API together isn't really easy, especially due to different language design philosophies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What's wrong with embedding python interpreter as a C library?

<comment><USER3> That's pretty much exactly what python-on-android does; the problem is that you don't get access to any of the Java/Dalvik-based libraries, which includes all of the UI programming libraries.

<comment><USER29> Couldn't a language-bridge library use Java reflection to accomplish a lot of what's needed?

<comment><USER30> That is already done with pyjnius. The missing part is providing more pythonic and more productive ways of using it. Currently it is extremely awkward...

My guess is that someone will write a pythonic UI framework based on the Android API...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How much of the 'batteries included' approach of Python will work well in the Android environment?

It reminded me of this: [http://www.tinypy.org/](http://www.tinypy.org/)

</comment><comment><USER32> If Guido Van Rossum can't convince his own coworkers to support Python in their own platform who else can do it?

Meanwhile, Lua is not doing bad in both Android and iOS.

<comment><USER28> This is the best logic I ever heard in this thread.

Guido is working in Google, and Google doesn't support Python on Android. Python is just secondary scripting language even in Google, can't take a strategic support. Their primary product/platform language was always languages with forced type (an)notation - Java/C++.

Same thing happen on C#. Anders Hejlsberg couldn't convince any other MS product teams to use C#, so C#/.NET literally abandoned for years. MS is advertising C++11 now, and Mr. Hejlsberg is working on another C#.

As far as I remember, the only support was XNA came from DirectX team, but it actually discouraged the addition of C# by proving inferiority of C# on game development.

<comment><USER33> Well MS fucked that one up, didn't they? They should have ignored C++11, and got Hejlsberg to design a new one ;)

Regarding C# and/or .NET's abandonment - is this really the case? It certainly doesn't seem like it, with new revisions of the CLR coming out somewhat regularly, seemingly with new bits in each time. There's been LINQ, this new async thing, Rx, and that XML UI thing. And I know Silverlight is dead, but nothing dies without having been alive first! And I'm sure if you actively pay attention to the ecosystem - I don't, I use C# as a fancy MFC - you'd be able to reel off a whole pile of other things. It might not be quite the PR darling that it was in its youth, but it doesn't quite seem dead yet...

It might be true that teams at MS don't use it.

<comment><USER28> I am not sure that we're talking on same context… but anyway.

I invested much time on C# 1.0 to 3.0 for XNA, and MS never give a shit on XNA for years and finally fucked me up. XNA doesn't exist anymore. Happy time with MS was the biggest reason made me to learn C/C++. Ironically, now Unity3D is working well with that C#.

Anyway now I am on C++11 on Xcode(You should know what I mean!) and happy because I don't need to worry about any abandonment. C/C++ is core language for any practical platforms (including browsers!), and I don't need to `IDispose` all my source codes by vendor's decision.

XNA stuff was my personal experience, but at least for me, MS surely abandoned the platform, and will do it again at any time. And this was possible because their core teams are not using XNA. In other words, strategic support.

Maybe not yet on other fields, but I feel the time is close. The proof is, of course, the TypeScript. If you haven't checked it, google it right now. MS decided to make a new language instead of porting CLR on Javascript. I am sure that stuff is post .NET/C# (I mean post buzzword) of MS. If you don't believe MS will abandon .NET, think about how MS themselves will be damaged if .NET abandoned. Virtually none. None of their product core is _based_ on .NET. Anyway even after they abandon .NET, it will keep taking periodic update like they did on ActiveX for last decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> performance performance performance.

And it is not just about direct user experience either.

Even if a given app may be written in Python it will probably drain the battery faster, since for each bit of work that would have taken X cpu cycles with Java, you would spend 20X with Python, not to mention memory handling, etc...

A language is just a tool, use the right one for the Job.

a Pythonista

<comment><USER35> Not sure about that... actually most (well-written!) android code is already pretty wasteful with resources, because its abstractions upon abstractions.

To get a simple button on the screen, you need an Activity with a Fragment with a View with the button inside, with a few more layers inbetween. The gui is loaded from multiple XML files and resources, with lots of dynamic property binding going on. And even don't get me started on data storage and SQLite...

Writing an app in python wouldn't add much to this - it actually may allow you to avoid a couple of layers (the dreaded FactoryFactory syndrome of java). Python's weakness is number crunching, and I agree, you wouldn't want to do that in Python on Android. But just to show a gui, or to access a web api, python's performance should be more than enough.</comment></comment>


OpenPGP support in Go - <AUTHOR> http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/06/12/goopenpgp.html

<comment><USER2> Anyone else think it may be time to look seriously at learning Go?

<comment><USER3> I looked into it. Go neither provides you the safety of immutable data structures nor the freedom of direct memory manipulation. You're still expected to track who "owns" what struct so you can avoid concurrency conflicts, though it does provide nice mechanisms to pass that ownership along (in the form of thread-safe buffered queues.)

I am going with libtask and zmq in C for now.

<comment><USER4> How come you're not bothered by C's numerous deficiencies, like being the one language responsible for majority of security issues, ease of corrupting memory, tediousness of manually managing memory and the fact that half of professional programmers can't decipher C type declarations of medium complexity (<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/ECC-Fun-Writing-Compilers>).

If safety is your goal, Go certainly gives you more of it than C.

If "freedom to directly manipulate" things is your goal, Go gives you more of it than all other languages. Go has unsafe package which gives you exactly the same freedom to manipulate random bits in memory as C. And if that's not enough, Go natively supports assembly.

Go is interesting because on a spectrum of efficiency and easy of programming, it gives you both very good ease of programming and a good efficiency. C gives you efficiency but no ease of programming. Python and Ruby give ease of programming but no efficiency.

If you looked at Go, it must have been from a very, very far away.

<comment><USER3> > How come you're not bothered by C's numerous deficiencies, like being the > one language responsible for majority of security issues, ease of corrupting > memory, tediousness of manually managing memory and the fact that half of > professional programmers can't decipher C type declarations of medium > complexity (<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/ECC-Fun-Writing-Compilers>).

Every language choice has trade-offs. To address your specific request, I am not bothered by the issues you raise because there are strategies to ameliorate them. Security issues and corrupting memory largely come from unbounded data. C has _fantastic_ tooling to profile and analyze applications. Unlike Go, there is always something you can do to achieve your desired behavior. YES there are warts and problems a-plenty, but they are well-known and there is a vast collection of people and articles about dealing with them.

I never meant to imply that C was more safe than Go. Erlang is, which I meant to imply with the comment about immutable message passing concurrency. Immutable message passing concurrency is amazingly safe and free from classes of errors that Go programmers still have to deal with (race conditions!) In Go, the canonical style is to pass pointers through channels (and pass ownership along with it.) Two goroutines can still mutate the same object out from under each other, leading to all of the potential issues you run into with multithreading in C.

The Go garbage collector sucks, currently (check out the recent mailing list threads with trivial applications that trip it up.) They know this and it is on the roadmap for development, but it isn't there yet; stopping the world to do your work (and taking a LONG time to do so in perverse cases) is not something I want to deal with. When using a "systems" language, I want to have repeatable and knowable performance.

Using the unsafe package defeats all of the benefits of using Go while maintaining all of its shortcomings. Additionally, there is great difficulty with incorporating existing C libraries (yes, cgo is an option but it does not work with gccgo and it is poorly documented -- for instance, how do you make the Go garbage collector aware of C struct lifetimes?) Even if you stay within the language, you have to choose lightweight go-routines or optimized code generation (gc vs gccgo.)

Another irritating thing is that Go maps cannot have binary data as keys, only certain types (numbers and strings, basically.) Discovering this was not easy, and the suggested answer is to coerce an array of bytes to a string (making a copy) for storage and every time the key should be accessed.

> If you looked at Go, it must have been from a very, very far away.

Just because I have come to different conclusions than you have, please do not assume my view lacks research or analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I for one look forward to an endless stream of "X support in Go" and "Y reimplemented in Go" posts over the next few years.

And judging from the last 20 years of programming language evangelism/flame wars, I completely expect to see "X support in AnotherLanguage" and "Y reimplemented in AnotherLanguage" posts followed up by "How AnotherLanguage is so much better than Go" and "AnotherLanguage vs. Go."

Sadly, what we'll never see is a retrospective along the lines of, "Did we waste all our time reinventing the wheel in AnotherLanguage?"

<comment><USER6> If X is an OpenPGP implementation, I support this. We need more implementations of this standard.</comment></comment>


GCC 4.7.0 Release Candidate available from gcc.gnu.org - <AUTHOR> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2012-03/msg00014.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Changes, New Features, and Fixes -> <http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.7/changes.html></comment>


The European Atrocity You Never Heard About - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/The-European-Atrocity-You/132123

<comment><USER2> Speak for yourself, Chronicle. The broad outlines of the Prussian displacements were in my 11th grade world history text. The NY Times has dealt with the case of Silesia within the last 10 years, and there were books about the displacements from Bohemia not that long ago either.

I will say also that it is seldom that anyone comes out of a war with clean hands, which is all the more reason for hesitating to start one.</comment>


A spambot just vomited its "recipe" in my comments section - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/t9P7D0s0

<comment><USER2> Very similar story: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9066796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9066796) (353 points, 23 days ago, 96 comments)

It's a variation of the same script. Probably the same bot.</comment>


Facebook Starts Its 'Rooney Rule' to Increase Diversity in Tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-17/facebook-starts-its-rooney-rule-to-increase-diversity-in-tech <comment><USER2> Can someone explain to me how these type of things aren't racist or sexist? I still don't understand how benevolent preference isn't sexist or racist. Selection should be merit based - not gonad or skin-color based.

If the rule applies only to "consideration", as mentioned, then that would be admittance to not following Equal Employment Opportunity laws and they would be open to a lawsuit as it is implying they didn't consider women and minorities before instating the rule, which is against the law.

<comment><USER3> If you want organizations to be merit-based, you need the larger social context to be merit based, so as to provide a 'background of fairness' to establish what is right or wrong for an organization. To do this, you have to take actions that drive wider social change, not simply optimize your organization.

(If you optimize at the organization level, you end up taking advantage of existing social biases, which is why those subcultures are heavily dominated by the male majority.)To fix this, organizations must not optimize within the existing social biases, but attempt to shift the social biases to that their optimizations are aligned with a merit based-society.

In other words, if you want to hit your target, you have to account for gravity and aim up a little.

<comment><USER4> "background of fairness" \- very impressive, maybe social engineering is a science now!

This is BS - in a normal society, competence rises to the top on its own accord - people naturally out of laziness defer to those who know what they are doing, regardless of race.

In the US we are living in a social engineered bubble that does not reflect reality. Take a look at the current administration, (and the several before, to be fair) - competence is not even on the radar for consideration of a job - it's political connections and race first. And we see the results in the news every day.

<comment><USER3> You're not saying anything. Obviously politics is a matter of politics, the concept of 'merit' there is corrupt beyond belief. And it's precisely because people don't have the means to think properly about these kinds of issues.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Calacanis' Side of the Resignation Story - <AUTHOR>

An excerpt from his email newsletter.
An email with the subject line every CEO loathes: Resignation.
Ugh.
Another promising Gen Y-er leaves after one year and a couple of days, shockingly right on time to vest their first cliff of stock options (25%). Via email? At nearly midnight? To go to a 15-year-old competitor that we're trying to crush?
No "hey boss..." discussion? No "I know it's unprofessional to leave after 12 months, but I feel this is an important career move. Can I explain my thinking?"
CEOs and founders understand that folks leave, but that discussion is customary. A late-night resignation email isn't appropriate. The most frustrating part is not losing a great person--which happens--but rather watching someone with promise set their career back five years in order to have their salary jump ahead by three years.
Trading massive advancement to pop your salary, is a career move I could never understand. Back in the day when I was employable I would never have made that trade off--instead I cultivated my network. Nothing puts me on tilt like talented young people trading long-term rewards and career development for short-term greed and negative expectations.
"Congratulations on being employee 4,235 at a dying company" was the most I could muster as an e-mail response while parked at a light, getting on the 10 freeway. Oh yeah, today was your last day. And since you're going to a competitor, please don't show up at the office.
Right after I hit send I had that familiar moment: "did I really just say that?"
It's not easy being me. I've got a version of tourette's where instead of yelling obscenities at inappropriate times, I say something brutally honest without regard to my reputation or the other person's feelings. There's no reason to make the kid feel bad on the way out when I could have just said "Good luck, we will miss you greatly!"
What's the benefit of telling people how you really feel when the result of doing so only results in unpleasantness?
C'est la vie. No one is perfect. We all have flaws and the best we can hope for is that our virtues outweigh them right?
Oh, it turns out my response is now on your blog, Hacker News and TechCrunch.
Great. <comment><USER2> Jason, you need to understand the difference between your persona and your reputation. What you write on your blog, your email newsletters, your facebook and your tweets is your persona. What people think of you behind your back when you thought they were not watching is your reputation. It takes a lifetime to build a reputation. It only takes one tiny miscalculation to throw it all away. And you have been throwing it all away, first with stealing contributors from Digg, then with hijacking Leo Laporte's brand, and now beating up on some young kid who just wanted to better his life ... Horribly disappointed in you.

<comment><USER3> Jason doesn't have just one persona. He alternates from Dean Martin to George Steinbrenner and from Jerry Lewis to Donald Trump. Now he's doing his Tony Soprano "youth today" routine demanding one-way loyalty. Hey Jason, while you're getting in touch with your old-school values, go ahead and hire a publicist. You really need one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He also mentioned that the CTO of Mahalo quit. The CTO of a technology startup does not normally quit after 3 years! That would be far more shocking to me than a programmer quitting after 1 year.

Evan Culver as much as said Mahalo was a shitty place to work (<http://twitter.com/evanculver>). If the CTO is quitting it can't be that great for a programmer.

My impression of Jason is that he underpays people, overworks them, and doesn't hold himself to the same standard. Does he take a significantly below market salary (or no salary?) Does he actually clock in 9+ hours a day on Mahalo? Is he the first one there in the morning and the last one out?

From the outside it seems like he spends a lot of his time playing around on his side projects. Hanging out with cool people. And generally taking it easy. No one wants to kill themselves working for a guy that seems to be having fun doing unrelated things. VCs are even less okay with that, as far as I know. How long will they put up with him launching/running side companies?

My guess is that within 18 months he will not be the CEO of Mahalo. He will be much happier doing things he genuinely likes and is genuinely good at, such as This Week in Startups.

<comment><USER5> Mark Jeffrey our CTO did not quit Mahalo. He wanted a new challenge and he became CEO of a company we partnered on called ThisWeekIn.com.

He is in the Mahalo building every day and helps us with hiring. So, another example of loyalty.

<comment><USER4> He may not have quit Mahalo, but he clearly quit his job as CTO of Mahalo. You can spin that if you want, but it's not generally considered a good thing when the CTO of a tech startup resigns his position.

<comment><USER5> So people are not allowed to leave their position after three years? Wow... you're more hard core than me!

Seriously, you have no idea. Mark and I have been close friends since 1994 or 95 and I think I might know the situation a little better than you.

I mean, it feels like you're looking to make this into something bad... I think it's GREAT if someone I work with moves on to another company I'm associated with.

anyway, enjoy the rest of your day trolling on HN

<comment><USER4> Jason, what makes this site nice is that we generally don't accuse each other of having ulterior motives. Everything I said should be taken at face value. I'm not trolling. I'm just calling it like I see it, and I certainly admit I could be calling it wrong!

What I see is you perfectly okay with your CTO resigning his job after 3 years, but coming down harshly on a programmer for resigning after 1 year. That seems unfair and hypocritical, and that's why I pointed it out. You can safely ignore me, or point out why I'm wrong. You don't need to resort to name calling or get upset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Another promising Gen Y-er leaves after one year and a couple of days, shockingly right on time to vest their first cliff of stock options (25%)._ ... _I know it's unprofessional to leave after 12 months_

Really?! Sounds reasonable to me. It also sounds like their compensation might be setup to encourage the exact thing he's complaining about.

 _The most frustrating part is not losing a great person--which happens--but rather watching someone with promise set their career back five years in order to have their salary jump ahead by three years.

Trading massive advancement to pop your salary, is a career move I could never understand. _

When I read the resignation email it sounded like the guy was looking forward to some new technical opportunities. I suspect Jason may have misunderstood some people's motivations and what their idea of "massive advancement" is. Given that he didn't try and get a pay rise, I don't think this was about popping his salary.

</comment><comment><USER7> He's a bit delusional...

I agree that Yahoo is the C-list, but Mahalo is the bigger resume stain, unless you're making a career in spam.

<comment><USER8> How is Yahoo the C-list? They may not be as good at making money as Google is, but they have a lot of good engineers and over the past few years they've done a lot more than Google. They have YUI, BOSS, and I've had much better luck with Yahoo's search results than with Google's. Google has all the hype, but they keep releasing things like Wave and Buzz that aren't very useful to most people.

It seems to me that he really made the choice between working on a spam engine and working with a lot of talented people on interesting products that are used by hundreds of millions of people. Calcanis not having anything good to say about Yahoo is expected, but there's a lot more to Yahoo than the Google fanboys would have you believe.

<comment><USER7> Yahoo doesn't have much of a hiring filter. It's very easy to get hired there. Thus, there are a lot of people just taking up space, or worse. There's a lot of cargo cult "engineering" going on. This makes it hard for good people to not lose their minds. Whenever Yahoo acquires a company, the acquired talent flees as soon as possible. Google started down the same path of talent dilution with their huge hiring spree a few years back, but they already had enough talent so it's not going to affect them as much. I didn't intend this to be a Yahoo/Google comparison, but it is incorrect to say that Yahoo has done more than Google the past few years. Buzz and Wave are indeed solutions without a problem but are technologically more impressive than anything Yahoo has done, ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> is there plans for malaho to be anything other than a low quality google spam long tail site?

as much derided as yahoo is, it is still one of the biggest sites on the internet which is putting out some great tech, when you get a chance to go to somewhere with people like douglas crockford and steve souders as peers its pretty hard to count as a step backwards from anywhere.

<comment><USER10> And let's not forget $600m or so in profits last year.. hardly "dying." Like PHP, Yahoo might not be cool amongst geeks.. but it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As amusing as this kind of stuff is in a Schadenfreude kind of way, can't we relegate it to ValleyWag where it belongs?

</comment><comment><USER5> The full post is here--I would read the entire thing not just these 300 words quoted above.

<http://calacanis.com/2010/04/27/red-jackson-gen-y-loyalty/>

Now, the entire piece is over 3k words. It's a commitment, I know. Most people in the world, and sadly commenters in HN of late, seem to follow a pattern of "skim and flame." (i.e. read for 90 seconds, grab a quote out of context and write a flame).

If there are folks who want to ask me questions about the overall theme I'm willing to discuss/debate/take my lashings. All I ask is that:

a) you read the whole thing, wait 60 seconds and then write some questions. b) submit questions in #/bullet format and try to keep them on the shorter side so I can get to as many of you as possible.

Side note: The Gen Y folks on Hacker News are, in general, the 1/3rd that kick ass. The 1/3rd that I created TechCrunch50, This Week in Startups and Open Angel Forum for. The folks who are doin' work and damage on the daily.

best @jason

</comment><comment><USER12> Jason,

People are loyal to people and institutions they respect. People and institutions that give them value in their lives. There is no respect simply because you're in charge. No loyalty just because you're the leader. Those coaches worked long and hard to earn the respect of their players, and that is why they are loyal.

You're barking up the wrong tree. There is nothing inherently broken about "Gen-Y". They are just as capable of loyalty as any generation that came before. The real questions you need to reflect on are these. Are you respectable? Are you worthy of loyalty?

</comment><comment><USER13> I have a great respect for Jason, but there isn't explanation for his chidish reaction. Even if he wanted to communicate his true thoughts with that employee, it was done in irrelevant way, which completely defeated any purpose. I don't see how is it wrong for a person to look for a better future for himself, no one can say what Jason can offer in 5 years and what the competition can offer. What is long term is out of the equation, but what is today is definitely in and has the major impact. I understand arrogance is important quality of all entrepreneurs, but they shouldn't underestimate humbleness. I hope he learn his lesson and moves forward.

</comment><comment><USER3> At-will employment: Deal with it or sign an employment contract. This applies to both parties. End of story.

Update:

Jason in October of 2008: "We've laid off a just under 10% of our full-time staff, cut our overhead by doing smart things like renting desks (we have six offices in Santa Monica fyi), and reorganized our editorial department to focus on freelance positions over in-house editors."

Freelance positions, huh? You can't have it both ways, Calacanis. As an experienced businessman you should know this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wait, Mahalo is trying to "crush" Yahoo..?!

<comment><USER15> I hear frequently that Mahalo is "crushing it".

<comment><USER16> Crushing what?

I can't see how they're even playing the same game.

One is a former portal struggling to reinvent itself. Perhaps with moderate success when compared to the Goorilla. But still with a noteworthy standing in a wide range of areas; Flickr, delicious, YUI, Messenger, Mail.

The other is a spam link farm, run by a CEO suffering from a strong case of delusions of grandeur. A single "product" that google could shutdown in a blink tomorrow.

So. The gnat crushing the elephant, really?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sounds like a bad breakup being covered by the tabloids except this isn't being covered by a sleazy reporter.

Calcanis' reputation: minus 1.

<comment><USER18> _underflow error_

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> " _but that discussion is customary_ "

Perhaps, but I've never seen anyone I respect advise doing exit interviews of any sort. While this article is HR department centric, it covers the issues very well: <http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/haexit.htm>

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand how a salary jump of 3 years can be a career regression of 5 years. That means you are paying him 8 yrs behind what he should be earning by his career progression? That is sad.

</comment><comment><USER21> How exactly is it unprofessional to leave after 12 months?

An employee doesn't owe an employer anything more than the employer owes the employee (which is not much). If a better opportunity comes up, who is the employer to prevent the employee from advancing their career?

</comment><comment><USER22> "I've got a version of tourette's where instead of yelling obscenities at inappropriate times, I say something brutally honest"

I am curious to know if this is a real thing?

EDIT: Just to clarify, I am not saying it isn't, I am genuinely curious.

<comment><USER11> Certainly not in the classification of Tourettes it isn't. And it's rather insulting to those of us who do have it to make an excuse like that.

Having lived with it for 30 years I wouldn't classify it as something to cast about lightly as some kind of metaphoric excuse for being an asshole.</comment></comment>


Should Microsoft Acquire Canonical / Ubuntu? - <AUTHOR> https://build5nines.com/microsoft-to-acquire-canonical-ubuntu-should-they/ <comment><USER2> > Disclaimer: To be absolutely clear, Microsoft has not made any announcements > regarding an acquisition of Canonical or Ubuntu. This article explores some > of the reason why they might do so in the future, and predicts that it's > something that would makes sense for the company going forward. Only > executives at Microsoft and Mark Shuttleworth really know if this is > something that has actually been discussed or thought about. I do NOT have > any insider information what so ever. Please leave a message in the comments > telling me what you think about this idea. Thanks! <

translates for me, into dont dump ubuntu distros quite yet, but look into prepping for it</comment>


Uber's subprime leases put drivers on road, but leave some shackled - <AUTHOR> http://www.seattletimes.com/business/ubers-subprime-leases-put-drivers-on-road-but-leave-some-shackled/ <comment><USER2> > She drives about 25 hours a week. In one week in May, she earned $604 for 28 > hours of work, she said — a slightly better-than-average week. Uber took > $160 for the car directly out of her paycheck, leaving her with $444.

So, for 28 hours of work, the driver got a car (with maintenance covered) and a ~$16/hour salary on top. Without the car payment, it's a $21/hour salary. That's apparently a near-average week.

I seem to have missed something, because it looks to me like Uber leant her a car that enabled her to do a job that pays better than even the most ambitious minimum wage initiatives. It's pricy, but so were all of her other options with "terrible" credit. Where's the evil here?

<comment><USER3> I agree with most of this, but it should be noted that $16/hour as 1099 income is not at all the same thing as $16/hour as a regular W2 employee. A rough equivalent would be about $11/hour. I think that's high still, as there are costs other than maintenance...like gasoline.

<comment><USER4> Average city driving speed for LA is 26.8 MPH [0], which means she's driving around 750 miles per week.

She leased a 2015 Honda Civic, which has a rated fuel economy of 31 MPG.

Assuming she gets the rated gas mileage from her civic, she's buying 24 gallons of gasoline per week for 2.39 [1] per, costing her $57.

AAA gives an estimated 5.51 cents per mile for maintenance and tires [2], costing her $41.

So, take home pay after expenses is $604 - $160 - $57 - $41 = $346, or $12.3/hr.

IANAA, so I don't know which of these expenses qualify for deductions when she files. But an annual pay (after expenses) of $17,992 doesn't leave much wiggle room for paying for an accountant, assuming Uber indentured servitude is her only income generating activity.

0\. [http://infinitemonkeycorps.net/projects/cityspeed/](http://infinitemonkeycorps.net/projects/cityspeed/)

1\. [http://www.losangelesgasprices.com/](http://www.losangelesgasprices.com/)

2\. [http://exchange.aaa.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/2016-YDC-...](http://exchange.aaa.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/2016-YDC-Brochure.pdf)

<comment><USER2> This is mostly a good assessment, but the maintenance cost should be reduced - one part of Uber's lending program is covered routine maintenance. Gas at least should be deductible, I don't know whether the car payments can be counted in whole or in part.

The overall point is well taken, though. There are several hits to real income for Uber drivers that aren't shared by other types of low-wage worker, and while "set your own hours" offers more upside than a normal part-time job, it's limited by how many high-demand hours there are in a week. Rather than extra overtime pay, I imagine hours past her current 28 would give steadily diminishing returns.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it matters if the car payments can be counted or not.

But, according to [0] (I'm not sure how accurate/reputable it is; again, IANAA), the deductible portion of $604 _52=$31,408 is only $2,218.90.

Gas at $57_52=$2,964 already extends past that cap.

Assuming her income is taxed before the lease payments are made, and hits her full deductible, she's paying total taxes of $4,437.81

So, net after-tax, after-expense income - I didn't realize that about routine maintenance - is $604-$160-($57 - ($2,218.90/52)) - ($4,437.81/52) = $344 / wk, or $13/hr.

Compared to working multiple inflexibly-houred minimum wage jobs, it's definitely better.

But in no way is it lucrative, or even lower middle class.

<comment><USER5> In most of the country $13/hr is indeed lower middle class.

<comment><USER6> We are specifically talking about Seattle here, though. All the other variables would also be different in different parts of the country.

<comment><USER7> > We are specifically talking about Seattle here, though.

The newspaper is from Seattle, but the driver featured in the article whose numbers were used for the calculations in this thread was actually in Los Angeles.

<comment><USER6> Ah, I stand corrected! But either way, things like car payments, insurance vary widely by geography, so it doesn't seem like applying this particular situation nationwide would prove much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Subprime lending == bad

Extending credit to lower-income borrowers == good

Are we just talking about price (interest) here? You may not like the price, but prices exist for a reason and cannot be changed by diktat. Who gets prime vs a subprime lease isn't determined by some ethnicity or the religious sect someone belongs in. It's determined by the risk and size of the loan. Smaller loans have relatively higher fixed costs, driving up the up front fees or interest rate. They are also harder to recover and may have a lower residual value, all factors that go into determining the risk. People with little or bad credit history are also more likely to default. This isn't controversial.

What's the alternative? Stop extending credit to risky borrowers? Force lenders to lend to risky borrowers at subsidized rates funded by tax dollars or through coercion?

[Edit] What I particularly don't like about these articles is the obfuscation of financial matters. For instance,

> After dropping $250 up front for her lease of a 2015 Honda Civic, she pays > $160 a week to Xchange. If she keeps the car for the full three-year term, > she'll end up paying Uber $25,210. The Kelley Blue Book fair purchase price > for a new 2015 Honda Civic SE in Los Angeles is $18,142.

> Schmitt said she'll need to pay Uber $5,000 or so more to buy the car if she > wants to keep it at the end of her lease.

So basically, she's getting a $18,142 (PV) car paying $160 (PMT) a week for 156 weeks (N) and have to pay 5,000 at the end to keep the car (-FV).

PV: 18,142

PMT: -160

N: 160

FV: -5000

I (weekly) -> 0.1942% (weekly)

I (annual) -> 1.001942^52 - 1 ->10.615%

So basically she got a loan at 10%. Also, you have to factor in that she has an option to purchase which she can choose to exercise. I don't know why they don't just say as much.

<comment><USER2> > What's the alternative? Stop extending credit to risky borrowers? Force > lenders to lend to risky borrowers at subsidized rates funded by tax dollars > or through coercion?

This seems to be a lot of people's answer. There's this weird claim that payday loans and bad car loans and similar are caused by "greed!" when the companies making them are operating at tiny profit margins. High default rates dictate high prices (which forms a vicious cycle, but that can only be broken from the outside).

The most 'predatory' thing about most bad-credit loans is the fee/repossession system, which tends to be sloppy and abusive because the borrowers are too broke to fight it. Uber has sidestepped that almost completely with a no- consequence termination scheme.

The push to ban or cripple access to low income loans can really only be justified in two ways. One is that these loans are somehow corrupt, but we're not talking about balloon mortgages here - these companies are dealing with principal-agent problems like the home lenders were, and they don't have profit margins to give up. The second is that low-income people are too dumb to make good decisions, so they take these loans. It's a patronizing stance that shouldn't pretend to be uncontroversial.

<comment><USER8> Actually new subprime auto loans install a device that allows the lender to disable and locate the car remotely (obviously not while in use). So repossession is a lot easier (and presumably less sloppy) compared to the alternative and is part of the reason subprime auto rates have fell over the years. Lenders don't want to repossess as they are in the business of charging interest, not in selling pre-owned cars. They only repossess at last resort. Going after missed payments is also very expensive, especially given the small amounts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The headline claim that drivers are left "shackled" doesn't seem to be supported by the article, which states drivers can leave their lease agreements at any time after the first 30 days, with only two weeks notice, and without harming their credit score.

If you think uber are overcharging for the vehicles, given the terms of the agreement, the risk they are bearing, etc. why not start your own offering which charges less?

<comment><USER10> Great comment. I went back and checked the article because I thought you were wrong and it said "within the first 30 days". But you're correct, any time AFTER 30 days, they can leave the program.

No mileage penalties and no contractual obligation to the lease are huge benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If drivers can walk away from the lease after 30 days (well, 44 to be precise), I see no problem with this offer. These drivers represent an extreme risk.

They just need to understand that the Uber lease should be treated as a short- term program.

[https://get.uber.com/cl/xchange/](https://get.uber.com/cl/xchange/) mentions pre-owned vehicles in addition to new ones.

"Vehicles requirements for Xchange Leasing program:

2009 or newer 75,000 or less miles no salvage, rebuilt or flood vehicle titles 4 full-sized doors minimum of 5 seatbelts (driver and 4 passengers) maximum amount financed $20,000 (subject to change)"

I would get the least expensive vehicle through Xchange, drive it to save about $3000, buy an Uber-qualified used vehicle, and enjoy life.

</comment><comment><USER12> I might give Uber a hard time about some things but I'm failing to see the evil in this. Yes, the leases might seem predatory, but if the target is high risk buyers and the apr is not off by an order of magnitude, seems like they are just enabling their work force.

I could think of a lot worse things than a company giving someone a job and then offering them expensive tools to do it.

<comment><USER2> Honestly, the APR looks totally reasonable (by bad credit standards).

They cite a $96 average weekly payment for all Americans, and compare it to a $130 weekly payment for Xchange. The article's tone implies that I'm supposed to go "30% markup, shocking!", but it's comparing all borrowers to bad-credit borrowers. Knowing how other loans are priced, that seems like a pretty standard adjustment (especially for the easy-use terms of the lease).

I honestly had a lot of trouble finding the malice here. Yes, the cars are expensive, but it's like complaining about on the level payday loans as 'extortion' \- the prices are set by a high default rate, not by some inexplicable market failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The difference between Uber and other subprime lenders, like mortgage companies, is that the recipients can actively become lower credit risks. They can just drive the car. At the rates Uber pays, probably around a full day a month.

So not only is this expanding credit options, it's expanding labor options.

</comment><comment><USER14> ""I'd say the cost is greater than the benefit for your average driver," - Isn't that the point of this scheme, that they target non-average drivers, ie those with low credit scores that would be unable to drive otherwise.

With regards to the figures at the end of the article. If Uber pays for insurance and repairs, it seems not a too prohibitive deal. If not the interest rates are well above 20%. Seems pretty sweet (for Uber).

But then again, a market rate of 20% for those without credit score isn't much worse that a credit card rate. And the LA-example comes through well above minimum wage.

<comment><USER15> You can do almost anything else at a W-2 job and make more money with less responsibility and risk. Your credit card rate comparison is absurd. You don't ever have to carry a balance with a credit card. You have no choice with a car.

<comment><USER16> W2 jobs are not comparable. Driving for uber is flexible - you can drive whenever you want, for however long you want each week. Obviously that value will come at a lower price point for wages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> articles like this drive me crazy, one might even be led to believe that the reporters for this story don't actually understand how a lease works.

If you walked into a car dealership and told them that you wanted to be able to break your lease with a couple of weeks notice and have unlimited mileage (with them understanding that you would be driving quite a bit) how much more do you think they would charge for that lease?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the article..."As the video promoting the arrangement puts it: 'The best part: Payments are automatically deducted from your Uber earnings.' "

<comment><USER18> That's going to have the same problems as the "company store" scam where you are paid in scrip. This makes moving to another employer much harder, because of the debt to the current employer (and/or their business partners).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here is a new startup idea, UberAir: We don't do tedious things like owning planes and hedging fuel costs. On the contrary, we are all about connecting enthusiastic pilots with awesome passengers.

The pilots get a lease offer for the planes so they'll own one after 50 years. The estimated pilot salary after deducting lease payments will be $1245 per month.

We're also working on pilot-less planes. Once these are done, we'll take care of the remaining contractors by launching UberLavatory, which will lease public toilets to enthusiastic Toilet Managers.

<comment><USER20> _> ..by launching UberLavatory..._

May I suggest a rebrand to ÜberLü?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _> After dropping $250 up front for her lease of a 2015 Honda Civic, she pays $160 a week to Xchange. If she keeps the car for the full three-year term, she'll end up paying Uber $25,210. The Kelley Blue Book fair purchase price for a new 2015 Honda Civic SE in Los Angeles is $18,142. Schmitt said she'll need to pay Uber $5,000 or so more to buy the car if she wants to keep it at the end of her lease._

This is kind of par for the course for some chunk of car dealers. They have no qualms in getting someone to ultimately pay $30,000 for an $18,000 car of which the margins are normally extremely tight (2-3%) with profit being a very long tail of maintenance work orders. This one Civic, if she ran it to term and then bought it out, brought in as much profit as DOZENS of Civics.

My sister learned similarly many years ago. She ended up paying $26K for a $15K car, simply because she didn't do the math.

Although we'd like businesses to not engage in these kinds of deals, but unfortunately many businesses rely on these deals. I think the only decision more costly that people getting unwillingly put over a barrel for a car is people making poor retirement planning decisions and paying through the nose in fees (or buying what a "financial advisor" that is really a salesman at a bank is peddling) when there are far lower cost alternatives. It sucks, but it's true.

<comment><USER22> Congratulations on figuring out how a BHPH dealer works.

Buy cheap economy cars that aren't upscale enough for a "real" used car dealer to have on the lot. Have your mechanic fix anything imminently wrong and put a GPS tracker in it. Require huge down payment (usually close to enough to break even) and/or absurd monthly payments. Hopefully you screw the customer out of a few months of payments before they can't pay, at which point you repo the car immediately and put it back on the lot for the next sucker.

<comment><USER21> _> Congratulations on figuring out how a BHPH dealer works._

In the case of my sister it was a franchised Toyota dealer selling new inventory. Not BHPH. She signed a 3-year lease on a Toyota Corolla with a ridiculous money factor component because they got her to simply focus on the monthly payment, then financed it for 6 years afterwards (again, by getting her to focus on the monthly payment) at a ridiculous interest rate despite a FICO over 720 by simply not shopping around (she agreed to 9.5% when 3% was easily available from many retail banks and CUs).

When I showed her what she could've paid instead if she had any patience and simply run the numbers, she was incredibly upset. Not with the dealer, but with herself for not doing the due diligence. That's ignoring the fact that she could've just bought a 5-year old one, because a Corolla is literally a dime a dozen (350-400K units sold per year in the US at the time).

This is my point. If you simple appear ignorant and lazy (not in a bad situation), there are plenty of businesses that will use that to their advantage. If you are in a bad situation, it's just more potential leverage for them.

Yes, some franchised dealers do this with new inventory, even to people with good credit. If they think they can make an easy buck off of you on account of your ignorance, some will take the short-sighted approach (not trying to earn a repeat customer) and try to do it. If you throw up your hands they'll come back around and try to close the sale on amenable terms and offer it however they do, to make the sale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Uber may not be making a profit directly on the leases, but it's clearly a way to get more drivers at a lower effective wage.

        In one week in May, Schmitt earned $604 for 28 hours of
        work, she said — a slightly better-than-average week.
        Uber took $160 for the car directly out of her paycheck,
        leaving her with $444.

That works out to about $15/hour after the lease payment, even less if it's not including fuel costs.

<comment><USER24> But you can't ignore the value of the lease of the car; it's not like you can only use it to drive for Uber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hmm, sounds like a great idea, except that they should do this with cheaper, used cars. if you have bad credit, you shouldn't be buying a brand new car.

<comment><USER26> > _if you have bad credit, you shouldn 't be buying a brand new car._

Can you elaborate? I don't see how that follows.

<comment><USER27> A brand new car might cost your 400-600/mo whereas a used car might cost your 2000usd total (5 months at 400/mo of savings). Even if you buy a piece of garbage, you could replace anything wrong with it and still come out ahead. A new car is really a stupid buy for a person with little income.

<comment><USER28> But you cannot work as an Uber driver if you have "a piece of garbage", kind of defeating the whole point.

<comment><USER22> You can find a lot of cars that are perfectly acceptable (no immediate work needed, no visible rust, does not need extensive interior cleaning) at $2k-$5k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Xchange, which caters to people who have been rejected by other lenders, > isn't intended to be a moneymaker, said an Uber spokesman.

I'll be interested to see if that can continue in the long term. Consumer finance is an industry with an incredibly high profit margin, probably a lot better than Uber's core business will ever be.

</comment><comment><USER30> Southwest airlines, and taxi companies know one thing: an idle vehicle is an un-funded cost. Will uber add in functionality to support a "hot seat" model, one driver owns the car and another contributes to it by "using" it?

<comment><USER10> I wonder if Uber allows multiple drivers to use the same vehicle? I'm sure the lease company wouldn't like it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> How can they take a deduction from your paycheque for loan they helped setup for a car that is intended to be used to work for them... but your are just a contractor.

</comment><comment><USER32> Uber had better tools than usual credit companies to lend to riskier people. That's their advantage in money lending business.

</comment><comment><USER33> Do these drivers still need to get expensive commercial insurance or commit fraud?

</comment><comment><USER34> Haha, even more like an employer...</comment>


A Tale of Two Servers: A Short Story About ZFS on Linux - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/shapeways-tech/a-tale-of-two-servers-a-short-story-about-zfs-on-linux-be43f6e3a11e <comment></comment>


FOIA release on DOJ records of Tesla's documents at his death [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cris691/tesla-foia/blob/master/61392/146-7-51-0/146-7-51-0.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> This is not new information, but some newly released documents about an already known story: what happened to Tesla's materials after his death.</comment>


With Microsoft in Sights, China Starts to Squeeze U.S. Tech Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/business/microsoft-offices-in-china-are-targets-of-authorities-visits.html?_r=0

<comment><USER2> Taking some of the larger drug and tech companies to task for their behavior ought to happen in the US as well. Not suggesting there aren't motives beyond the good of world citizenry coming from the Chinese government, but still.....</comment>


Venture Capital Remains Highly Concentrated in Just a Few Cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/10/venture-capital-concentration/539775/ <comment><USER2> It's odd to split off SF from San Jose, and somewhat odd splitting LA from San Diego (it's all SoCal). What's crazy is if you add up CA's numbers its 54% of all VC investment, with the bulk of that (44%) in SF/San Jose.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you doing about the changing climate? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> plan de manejo, e implentacion</comment>


Databases are dead, long live the immutable state atom - <AUTHOR> http://dchambers.github.io/articles/databases-are-dead/ <comment><USER2> Some related ideas:

      • https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying
      • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_database
      • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitemporal_data</comment>


Should You Build or Buy Your Micro-ISV? - <AUTHOR> http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2008/10/03/should-you-build-or-buy-your-micro-isv/

<comment><USER2> The server's down.</comment>


Move beyond behavioral targeting: using mouse movements to read visitor's mind - <AUTHOR> http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/behavioral-targeting-using-mouse-movements/

<comment><USER2> Surely the raininess factor is an April fools at least?

The happyness factor from mouse movements? Well I'm unsure but I can see how someone could argue that could be calculated. But raininess? Please no.

<comment><USER3> It is not about whether it will rain or not. It is about whether a user thinks it will rain or not. Surely it can be predicted, isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember GazeHawk had done some research about this, I'd love to hear their thoughts.

<comment><USER5> I was preparing my "this is bullshit" face, which involves aggressively linking to our rebuttal ( <http://www.gazehawk.com/blog/eye-tracking-vs-mouse- tracking/> )

Then I looked at the calendar. Well played Paras!

<comment><USER6> In the non-calendar related world, some of the cutting edge research on using cursor movements is done by the University of Washington and Microsoft Research: <http://jeffhuang.com/Final_CursorBehavior_CHI11.pdf>

The article shows how movements and hesitations can be used to figure out which links are relevant to you. I believe this is the largest scale study to date (38 subjects on eye-tracking + cursor-tracking, thousands of subjects on cursor-tracking only).

Also, this article from Emory University: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.169...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.169.5079&rep=rep1&type=pdf) uses cursor movements to figure out if a user is browsing/researching a product or ready to buy.

<comment><USER5> It's funny because that paper and our blog post cite the same Google paper. There's some level of interpretation of data, but some of his cited papers offer strong evidence contrary to his point.

From the Jeff Huang paper:

       The mean Euclidean distance between cursor and gaze is 178px
       (σ = 139px) and the median is 143px.

The problem here is that there's a long tail of completely inaccurate data: the average distance between eye and mouse is 178px. I believe there are some people who tend to follow their eyes with their mouse, and some people who don't. Google research suggests the ratio is about 1:2.

That being said, I am a bit off topic here: there is most definitely value that can be extracted from mouse position. Can it be used to tell where the user is looking? Unlikely in the common case. Can it indicate purchase intent? I wouldn't be surprised.

My rebuttal was mostly premeditated by the amount of false interpretation of research about mouse-eye correlation. There's a lot of really good research out there, but it's often mis-cited to support an opposing claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks cool :) looking forward to use it !!

</comment><comment><USER8> There are mathematics symbols, it looks scientific. Must be true :)

</comment><comment><USER9> One step further... using body movements...

<http://mail.google.com/mail/help/motion.html>

"Create a flowchart with ease" :-)

But is the undertone a suggestion that Kinect just isn't going to make it out of the world of gaming?

</comment><comment><USER10> This is kool.

</comment><comment><USER11> The ten test subjects is hardly a representative sample.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget all of them are from 4Chan. It is as representative as it can get.

<comment><USER11> Wow, I missed that completely. Tags: april fool joke, behavioral targeting, joke, lol, sophisticated

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mouse tracking only solves 20% of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER13> almost fell for it.. well done

</comment><comment><USER14> Can it also tell whether I am thinking of pink ponies while viewing your site, so that an appropriate visual style and colour scheme can be presented? I think that would be a valuable addition to an exemplary toolbox for professional web developers.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is that an MCP neuron??

</comment><comment><USER7> hey one question though.. is it related to the day?? :D

<comment><USER3> Which day are you talking about ;)

<comment><USER16> April 1st

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Read my mind. Also stole some of the change I had laying beside my laptop. Impressive.

</comment><comment><USER18> I heard Color was using this technology to determine whether people were angry, disappointed, or just waiting for something interesting to happen when using their app.

<comment><USER19> Actually Color used an early version of this technology to determine how VCs would react to their pitch and tuned it appropriately. This really helps explain both the amount they raised and the confusing quote from Sequoia that "we haven't seen anything this rainy since Google!"</comment></comment>


The Problems with Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-problems-with-open-source-and-how-to-fix-them-interview-with-justin-searls/ <comment><USER2> The audio only [Soundcloud] version: [https://soundcloud.com/fogcreek/justin- searls-the-problems-w...](https://soundcloud.com/fogcreek/justin-searls-the- problems-with-open-source-and-how-to-fix-them)</comment>


Ask HN: What is a hacker - <AUTHOR>

What do you consider to be a hacker? Some have called recently dead pop stars, tv pitchmen or even news reports hackers. <comment><USER2> I would say it's anyone who finds a creative way to use something in a new and interesting way. This may include producing an entirely new thing or simply reworking some other thing -- or combining lots of different things together to serve a new purpose. Traditionally it applies mostly to technology but I don't see that as a restriction to the term at all. The first guy who figured out you could chip flint stones into very sharp spears to hunt with was a hardcore hacker.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll take the skeptical approach and say that "hacker" is a word used by certain people to define certain other people, and that we're as likely to figure out a good definition of "hacker" as we are of "love" or of "life".

Personally, I see a hacker as somebody that changes things in an unexpected way. It's the unexpected that makes somebody a hacker instead of a coder or an entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER4> a modifier/a tweaker

One that explorers and executes options which were not necessarily originally intended.

When some call such figures hackers, they do not refer to any definition but rather the name as a role. When We think about what comes to mind when we think about a Hacker, what a hacker does, who a hacker is, what characteristics hackers express, what role hackers play in society, we extend the 'job title' to fill non-hackers which meet those characteristics.

</comment><comment><USER5> an innovator

</comment><comment><USER6> A hacker is somebody for whom not all solutions are equal; the more elegant is to be preferred.

Of course, definitions of elegance vary greatly :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> i like unix terrorist's definitions from phrack 65: "hackers are people that gain unauthorized access/privileges to computerized systems...And what is up with the use of the term "cracker"? As far as I'm concerned, that term applies to people that bypass copyright protection mechanisms."</comment>


How Kulbhushan Jadhav's mother foiled Pakistan's crooked plan - <AUTHOR> https://m.timesofindia.com/india/how-kulbhushan-jadhavs-mother-foiled-pakistans-crooked-plan/articleshow/62274323.cms <comment><USER2> Man why you are sharking all 'crooked' links from Indian MSM? Any agenda or just killing time ?</comment>


Poppy, the first 3D robot that anyone can build and program - <AUTHOR> https://www.poppy-project.org

<comment><AUTHOR> A demo: [https://vimeo.com/76917854](https://vimeo.com/76917854)

The time-lapse build: [https://vimeo.com/96262428](https://vimeo.com/96262428)</comment>


Xmarks Service is Down - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xmarks.com/ Heads up.  I just deleted all the bookmarks from one of my PC's.  When I saw the error, I clicked the download link.

    Downloading the current snapshot from the server usually
    fixes this, but will cause you to lose any local changes
    that have not been synchronized. Would you like to perform
    a download?
 I ended up creating some bookmark backup / restore scripts, ala http://www.digitalwindfire.com/posts/backup-and-restore-google-chrome-bookmarks/ to/from my dropbox, and used that to restore the bookmarks on the PC I had wiped bookmarks on using the download, from a PC that still had them. <comment><AUTHOR> Heads up. I just deleted all the bookmarks from one of my PC's. When I saw the error caused by this downtime, and not knowing the service was actually down, I clicked the download link.

        Downloading the current snapshot from the server usually
        fixes this, but will cause you to lose any local changes
        that have not been synchronized. Would you like to perform
        a download?

I then proceeded to watch as my bookmark bar began to slowly de-populate. I was in the process of starting a video for my daughter to watch, and was talking with her, and not paying close attention.

I ended up creating some bookmark backup / restore scripts, ala [http://www.digitalwindfire.com/posts/backup-and-restore- goog...](http://www.digitalwindfire.com/posts/backup-and-restore-google- chrome-bookmarks/) to/from my dropbox, and used that to restore the bookmarks to the victim PC, from a PC that still had them.</comment>


Ask HN: Has there ever been a movie based on a video game that did well? - <AUTHOR>

Just saw the review for Need for Speed and wondered if there has ever been a movie based on a video game that did well...
Here are some that come to mind, in no particular order:

  http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/need_for_speed/
  http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1058516-street_fighter/
  http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mortal_kombat/
  http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/resident_evil/
  http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lara_croft_tomb_raider/
 <comment><USER2> I think you're looking at the wrong metrics for 'did well'.

Tomb Raider was successful, for the studios, successful enough for them to give it another go. [http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=tombraider.htm](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=tombraider.htm) The second one lost money, and it looks like that was the end of the franchise.

Resident Evil has been a mixed bag, but clearly the studios were willing to risk it. [http://www.boxofficemojo.com/search/?q=resident%20evil](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/search/?q=resident%20evil)

Max Payne also seemed to make a bit, [http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=maxpayne.htm](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=maxpayne.htm)

<comment><USER3> Might as well throw the whole list on here. [http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=videogameadapt...](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=videogameadaptation.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On a related note... I can report that Trilobyte Games just inked an agreement with Angel Valley Media of Sun Valley, CA for a one-year license for film/TV rights to "The 7th Guest."</comment>


YouTube Founders Revamping a Site for Link Sharing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/technology/youtube-founders-aim-to-revamp-delicious.html?ref=technology

<comment><USER2> Steve & Chad, please buy flickr from yahoo

</comment><comment><USER3> That delicious should be called "a Yahoo castoff" is so damned depressing.

<comment><USER4> Think of Yahoo as a Delicious castoff. Better?

<comment><USER3> Yeah!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Compare this office photo:

[http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/12/business/delici...](http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/12/business/deliciousjump.html)

To this office photo:

<http://www.petefreitag.com/images/blog/delicious_office.jpg>

Everything old is new again.</comment>


Platter Crash on an IBM Death Star HD (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/crash/index.html <comment><USER2> People would pay good money for that kind of secure erasure if it could be triggered on demand. :)

<comment><USER3> There was a company which used to make hard drives for the military (perhaps they still do, but nothing on Google) which had a physical pull tab on the back which released an acid into the drive enclosure. Anyone remember this? I read about it perhaps 10 years ago.

<comment><USER4> Was it an acid? I've heard of thermite or magnesium. Same idea though

<comment><USER3> I assume was something like acid since it released a liquid into the cavity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember tearing into one of these that died, and found similar things. What was interesting too was that it seemed to be caused by a screw coming loose. The entire head assembly rides on a bearing, which is bolted to the chassis, usually on both ends. If I remember right, this one was only bolted on one end, the screw didn't have any thread locking compound on it. It came loose, instant head crash.

</comment><comment><USER6> Back before I could afford the minor increase in cost of ECC ram, and the larger cost of using RAID 1 or 5 or 6; I got bitten by this very issue in my personal hardware.

Just one of many times that I've been taught. Any data that is actually /valued/ should have a backup. Redundancy in operation is more a hedge against hardware failure, and unplanned downtime.

Integrity costs; pay for it. This is true everywhere.

<comment><USER7> It's not really a minor increase in cost for ECC ram; the CPU and motherboards that support ECC ram are considerably more expensive. To top it off, many times motherboards cannot support the full capacity of ram with ECC installed; my workstation can accept up to 8GB DIMMs with non-ECC and 4GB DIMMS with ECC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What was that blue stuff in the drive?

<comment><USER9> I believe that it would be lubricant from the hydrodynamic bearing[1] inside the hard drive.

[1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_bearing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_bearing) ]

<comment><USER8> Thanks, that was interesting to read. I take it that helium-filled hard drives work in a similar way?

<comment><USER10> Exact same way. The only difference is that helium is much less dense than air, so there's a lot less drag and thus the drive is more efficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So I guess the disk platters used a glass substrate, coated in a layer of magnetic medium?

<comment><USER12> Indeed so.

[http://www.computerhistory.org/groups/storagesig/media/docs/...](http://www.computerhistory.org/groups/storagesig/media/docs/DS_IBM%2075GXP%20Family_20121031.pdf)

'The drive, a 7,200RPM Deskstar 75GB drive, was released on 15 March last year [2000]. At the time, the press release announced excitedly that the drive was "the first IBM drive to use glass disk platters instead of aluminium ... allowing the recording head to read smaller bits of information that are packed more closely together. In addition, glass disks are more stable at higher speeds".'

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _was asked to see if we could determine the cause of the crash, as well as > to determine if it would be possible to recover any of the data on the > drive._

If it had been possible, it would have ceased being so after you took it apart at your desk!

<comment><USER14> Untrue. I once opened up a hard disk, left it open for a day, closed it up again and used it without errors for another year (though never for important data). And no, not this was not inside a cleanroom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ahh, I remember this scandal. What's funny is that there were tons of people affected by this from what i recall, because these drives were initially billed as some of the best hardware money could buy.

<comment><USER16> I actually had one of these disks, and used it as my main system drive for 6 years before finally retiring the entire system.

<comment><USER5> Yup some of them were fine. It was only certain capacity disks that had the issue. They solved the primary problem eventually. By then the reputation was already tarnished. "Death Star".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how many bits each particle of dust represented?</comment>


Taking Apple private: Makes sense but nobody has the money - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/17/taking_apple_private_makes_sense_but_nobody_has_the_money.html <comment><USER2> Is it crazy for Apple to use its money to create its own "bank", then loan itself the money needed for a buyout?

</comment><comment><USER3> My understanding of the resistance of Japanese companies to buyouts is due to the Keiritsu system rather than any legal hurdles.

To buy the controlling stake of, say, Mitsubishi the car manufacturer, you would need to buy shares from Meiji Mutual Life, Mitsubishi Steel Manufacturing, Mitsubishi Gas Chemicals, the Bank of Tokyo and a bunch of other companies.

And they won't sell. For any price.</comment>


The Decline of reddit Self Serve Ads - <AUTHOR> http://mydailygeek.com/blog/decline-of-reddit-self-serve-ads/ <comment><USER2> My first inclination is that it's the influx of Digg users causing the lower returns, however, I don't know if that holds water.

Digg is notorious for providing low-quality traffic, but that the volume is going down doesn't make sense in that regard, as more users should equal more volume, even if the quality of the volume is lower traffic, it should still be up.

This leads me to question whether or not the new Digg users are replacing Reddit users.

Of course, it could also just be to a lower quality campaign, or perhaps ad- blindness as the users have become more used to seeing the ad on Reddit's site? Another possible explanation would be the rise of Adblock amongst Reddit users, of course, but I don't think that number scales enough to be the proper explanation.

I'd love to hear from other Reddit advertisers to see if this is isolated or more widespread.

<comment><AUTHOR> those factors would affect the CTR, not volume.

adblock would make sense, but redditors were pretty heavy users 6 months ago too.

my guess is that due to adblock there is only so much traffic for reddit to give to advertisers(i.e. something like 1 million page views), and now the number gets divided by 54 instead of 11</comment></comment>


Clojure, Maven & SWANK - <AUTHOR> http://learnclojure.blogspot.com/2010/03/clojure-maven-emacs-eternal-golden.html

<comment><USER2> I like this - a very quick and concise getting-started tut with maven (which I've been hesitant about installing).</comment>


A list of crypto readings and resources - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2018/02/10/crypto-readings-resources/ <comment><USER2> should say "cryptocurrency" not "crypto"

<comment><USER3> A living language, bought and sold using cryptos.

<comment><USER4> Yes, its a living language. But, it makes everyone's life just a little bit harder when you try to co-opt a very old word, with a very clear definition, for your latest fiat currency.

Don't be a dick to mathematicians around the world. Just say 'cryptocurrency'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What field of computer science does BFT fall under?</comment>


Ask HN: What are some examples of great landing pages you've seen? - <AUTHOR>

...and why? <comment><USER2> As a Graphic Designer, I usually reference CSS/HTML galleries that give "web awards" to great websites.

[http://bestwebgallery.com/](http://bestwebgallery.com/) [http://www.thebestdesigns.com/](http://www.thebestdesigns.com/) [http://www.awwwards.com/](http://www.awwwards.com/)

These gallery websites should get you well on your way.

<comment><USER3> "Pages that have earned a web award" and "Pages that convert" aren't always the same thing.

<comment><USER4> Good point that is sometimes overlooked. Optimize your design for higher conversion rates. A/B test everything. If everything else is equal, then go with the pretty design.

Optimizely's landing page is a good example. The call-to-action button is above the fold, and you can quickly test out their product.

[http://www.optimizely.com/](http://www.optimizely.com/)</comment></comment></comment>


Bringing Traffic with Google Adwords - <AUTHOR> http://metajack.im/2009/01/17/bringing-traffic-with-google-adwords/ <comment><USER2> That's one way. Luis von Ahn solved this problem cleverly.

His ESP game has a bunch of images, and you and a partner have to come up with the same tag for each image. Do it fast, score lots of points.

Instead of having people play realtime, he recorded each session, so that if no one's playing that particular image, you're still playing against a human, time-shifted.

Obviously this isn't an exact corollary to Chess (what would the ESP game be, a 1-move chess game?), but there are ways of denecessitating simultaneity.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you tell us how much you spent?

<comment><USER4> Good luck with that :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is my project a potential startup? - <AUTHOR>

I am working on a project called spotted.at. http://spotted.at  I am not really sure what it is.  I just wanted to do some cool shit w/ HTML5 location stuff and node.
I have a habit of finishing projects and not ever launching them because I just did to learn etc... I don't know if I should ditch this and go start another for fun or if i should stick with it. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
When non-geeks ask what it is i say its a quick and easy way to locate people in your area that either have what you want or want what you have.
To geeks I say: spotted.at is a realtime hyperlocal social utility that connects people based on proximity and intent.
What's there now
1. click "I Have" and put a pic or email of what you have then send it
2. It will show up on the map and be searchable by any user in the area
3. Whatever you have in the search box when you click I have will be used as the description
4. If you use app from phone you can see other people in area looking for what you have (updates in real-time; thats kind of cool IMO)
What's next
1. More user interaction (e.g.: chatting)
2. Fixing video (currently only works for HTML5 video tags)
3. Adding data from twitter & fb to search results
4. Add game mechanics
5. Building out the finders fee affiliate style program
--thx <comment><USER2> What worries me isn't anything about the feature set, it's this: _I don't know if I should ditch this and go start another for fun or if i should stick with it._

Doing a startup can really suck and the difference between success and failure is often just a stubborn, pig-headed refusal to quit. This is why people say it's so important to be really, really passionate about your startup's idea.

I think you'll know when something's your startup when it's something you care about so much that there's no possible way you can stop working on it. Your project sounds like it could be a successful startup, but it doesn't sound like it could be _your_ successful startup.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm. Doesn't seem to be working with Chrome at the moment. I tried the 'I want' and 'I have' with no luck. Possible user error, but there's not a lot to screw up with the user interface. When searching, I never see a map.

<comment><AUTHOR> do you get an error?

<comment><USER3> "Uncaught Error: Page does not have permission to access location information using Google Gears"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not gonna mess with it at work, but it sounds like a cool project. Keep going.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanx man. Its probably best not to use from work because people post up some really odd stuff. That was my main reason for adding the search screen and not just having a map. I didn't want it to turn into chatroulette. My hope is that people tag things properly so only people looking for X will see X.

<comment><USER4> Well... I just saw some news special on how Craigslist has become a hub for prostitution. So you'll have that.

You'll just have to keep policing it. But I don't think most people will mind a bit of NSFW content.</comment></comment></comment>


Destroy Your Phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28264446

<comment><USER2> They only tested Android phones.

[http://blog.avast.com/2014/07/08/tens-of-thousands-of- americ...](http://blog.avast.com/2014/07/08/tens-of-thousands-of-americans- sell-themselves-online-every-day/)</comment>


Ask HN: What to build OR How to do market research?  - <AUTHOR>

I am a developer who builds web apps for lots of clients.
I want to build something as product for which people will pay, but don't know what to build.
1.How to do market research to know about competition and market size?
2.Competition is profitable or not?
3.Should I take inspiration from existing products in market?
I know best product I can build whose consumer is me itself, but as developer I use most of development tools which are already awesome.
There are lots of cool ideas are in my mind like one more twitter client or some facebook app, but these cool apps are not going to make money.
I know this problem is not unique.
I am expecting some kind of direction from this post.
Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> 1\. Google is the easy and fast way. If you don't find anything on Google look for industry associations or industry publications. The hard way is to actually go out and conduct a survey.

2\. If there are other businesses, it is actually a good sign. Customers maybe educated about the importance of your product and they are willing to buy it.

3\. A simple idea is "just to make it better". It's nothing wrong with looking on your competitor's software, asking their customers what they like and what sucks and built a better version of it.

Your point with development tools and "cool" apps is important. There are a lot of industries which are neglected with great software solutions. A friend of mine works in PR consulting for dentists and he told me that many of his clients use a software for administrating their patients which is horrible, unintuitive and expensive. His other clients just use Excel.

Edit: A simple method to find ideas for software is observing. Observe how people use computers. There are a lot of possibilities where a) you could improve the software or b) you could introduce new software to make their lifes easier.</comment>


JavaScript and Dart: Can we do better? - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/05/javascript-dart.html <comment><USER2> Though we don't have to. The real point of the web is that a poor view (standard html view) should suffice. That is what make WWW and Mosaic instead of Xanadu. It is a pain to have to close browser tabs to stop my fan rotating, since most of the times mplayer wont activate it. Bigger apps than anyone ever dreamt? Everyone dreamt them. It's just small apps are better. Worse is better.

<comment><USER3> The web is being stretched far beyond it's real point because we have found a need for safe, secure, installess /full-blown-applications/ but we haven't found anything better than the web to discover and deliver them. I'd love to have an iPad-in-my-desktop that's just a NaCl launcher. But, every time I think through what it would require to be practical, I end up re-inventing Chrome.</comment></comment>


Danger: Beware Vlookup Defaults [in Microsoft Excel] - <AUTHOR> https://exceljet.net/danger-beware-vlookup-defaults <comment><AUTHOR> OP here: I'm curious, do anyone know if the VLookup defaults make sense in any kind of way? I was first shocked when I realized this behaviour of VLookup, but then I was thinking that there was perhaps a good (although unclear) reason for it?

<comment><USER2> Backwards compatibility. VisiCalc only did approximate lookups ([http://www.felienne.com/archives/3980](http://www.felienne.com/archives/3980). Also a good article on the problems of this default)

Yes, they could have made the argument required, and have their file converter add it, but users typed in formulas from magazines at the time, so that wouldn't have worked there, unless they added UI for it.</comment></comment>


San Francisco is heating up, economy slowing down - <AUTHOR> http://kristian.tumblr.com/post/47818549/san-francisco-is-heating-up-economy-slowing-down <comment><USER2> This article is really poorly titled. The first paragraph should be the title:

 _Despite the recent economic downturn hitting the United States there is a buzz of activity in the internet world. San Francisco is not slowing down, neither is the thirst for innovation or knowledge._

<comment><USER3> Comma "we hope."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Mathematical optimization API - <AUTHOR>

I am developing a mathematical optimization engine and would like to know some problems you would like to solve?<p>Example:
- Find the geographical point of minimum distance between multiple points (Useful for location-based application) ... <comment><USER3> I have a space of about 2000 dimensions. Each coordinate is an integer ranging from 0 to 1000. I have a complex "score" function which I'd like to minimise, and I know very little _(I originally said "nothing" - that was a mistake)_ about its characteristics.

 _The following was added as further clarification:_

The scoring function is probably mostly "continuous"-ish. Small changes in the coordinates probably lead to small changes in the score, although there will be areas (hyper-volumes) where this isn't entirely true. It is possible to use non-integer coordinates for exploration, and the evaluation/scroing function is probably reasonably well behaved when doing this.

Hill-climbing/descending techniques give moderate results, but there are lots of local minima. Some local minima have wide catchment areas (hyper-volumes) but are not particularly extreme. Local gradients are mostly present - <USER2> aren't likely to be huge swathes that are effectively "flat".

<comment><USER4> Am I correct in saying that the only way to find the minimum with perfect accuracy is to iterate over all coordinates (i.e. no shortcuts possible)?

<comment><USER5> Depends if you can calculate the gradient and whether it it's known and defined. So, this all depends on the function in question. And also, the words "perfect accuracy" begs a definition here. How many decimals are we talking about here, or are we talking of all the "optimal solutions" or just one optimal solution, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am also into same optimization models which are provided as a webservices. I can give a rough idea like mine A model for NFL match prediction: my client(s) sends data in XML/json format (it may be about club,player etc), my model processes the data and sends back the solution again in XML/JSON format which he can show as a betting/prediction..watever he wants..

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! What's this webservice?</comment></comment>