Wikileaks internal memo on "The Fifth Estate" - <AUTHOR> http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/wikileaks-dreamworks-memo.html#about <comment><USER2> It is rather sleazy that they tried to portray Assange as a self-obsessed, egomaniacal cult leader of some kind. Claiming he was in a cult and bleaches his hair, etc. Quite an ad hominem (even if the movie is not intended to be a documentary or a polemic). People are going to watch the movie, see that, and go "oh, what a nut job" even though it's completely fictional.

Really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Also the claims that Assange is responsible for the harm or death of Americans, or that they later leaked unredacted documents.

The Social Network's dramatization of Zuckerberg wasn't nearly that acrid, in comparison.

<comment><USER3> > It is rather sleazy that they tried to portray Assange as a self-obsessed, > egomaniacal cult leader of some kind.

It is still sleazy if there's element of truth to that? Cult leader, maybe not, but his ego is visible from the ISS, and his narcissism is fairly hard to miss as well.

Likewise Assange is certainly intermingled with harm/death to Americans, if not directly involved. He claims there are higher reasons such as his effort to foist transparency on the U.S. government in particular, but you don't leak hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and still end up Doing No Harm.

Additionally it was Assange's mistakes that left the archive of unencrypted unredacted documents on a public web server in the first place. The Guardian journalist should have been just fine to publish the password years after the fact as the FTP share used to push the documents to the journalists doing the analysis was not required to be public for years! So again, although Assange is not "the sole gunman" here he does share in the responsibility.

And all of this now reaches back into why it might be appropriate to describe Assange with cult-like descriptives. You ask a U.S. Democrat and they'll probably be able to list at least 5 things they don't like about a prominent Democratic politician. Even a Republican would be able to list faults with their politicians.

But to hear people describe Assange, he is almost _literally perfect_ , has never done something wrong, makes snap decisions that are revealed to have been 100% beneficial years later, and never suffers from normal human misunderstanding or flaws in decision-making. Where does this come from?? I screw up something at least twice before breakfast every day, but any fault people point out with Assange must be as part of a vast government and media conspiracy to discredit him? OK, sure...

<comment><USER4> > Likewise Assange is certainly intermingled with harm/death to Americans, if > not directly involved.

Source? In what way has he directly been involved in any harm? Second, US Brig. Gen. Robert Carr vittnessed under oath that the armies investigation could not identify a single death. Do you know something that the second largest army in the world could not prove?

> So again, although Assange is not "the sole gunman" here he does share in > the responsibility.

I guess the architect for the World Trade Center do share some responsibility when the two building crashed in 2001. Had he built them more secure, more like a bunker, then so many people would still be alive. _so again, althrough Daniel Libeskind is not "the sole gunman" here he does share in the responsibility._

or maybe, just maybe I want to put the whole blame on Al-Qaeda.

<comment><USER5> Libeskind is the new guy. The original was designed by Minoru Yamasaki

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Yamasaki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Yamasaki)

Or was that a joke? :)

<comment><USER4> I am sorry, you are totally right. I got the two designers mixed up. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found the memo quite insightful as it goes into specific details on why and how the movie depiction differs from their perspective. Some quotes from the memo:

"THE FIFTH ESTATE falsely implies that WikiLeaks harmed 2,000 US government informants. ... US Brig. Gen. Robert Carr – who was tasked to investigate this matter by the Pentagon – in fact stated under oath when examined by the defense counsel that there was no harm whatsoever."

"Although THE FIFTH ESTATE purports to be about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, the film was made without the involvement of WikiLeaks or any of its staff, including Julian Assange. ... The multi-million dollar production, produced by Dreamworks and distributed by Disney, has not financially contributed to WikiLeaks or any of its defence funds."

<comment><USER3> > US Brig. Gen. Robert Carr – who was tasked to investigate this matter by the > Pentagon – in fact stated under oath when examined by the defense counsel > that there was no harm whatsoever

Not being able to prove harm is different from proving that one did _not_ harm someone. Especially when, in this case, the U.S. took measures to pre- emptively mitigate any harm as a preventive concern. Was the U.S. supposed to let their informants be killed by the Taliban just to be able to say that Assange is an even bigger asshole? Please.

<comment><USER6> I guess you don't subscribe to innocent until proven guilty? Even after exhaustive investigation and efforts to prove such guilt?

<comment><USER3> I believe there is a difference between reality and what the legal system is able to prove. They are necessarily different, as the legal system must apply to society as a whole, which means that we require it to have safeguards that will necessarily reduce its ability to deliver convictions.

This doesn't mean that any party not convicted didn't do it; it simply means they were convicted, just as the legal system sometimes manages to deliver convictions on people who were actually innocent.

In this case there's no way to even think of how to apply a legal-style investigation except under some kind of quantum parallel-universe model. Exhaustive investigation or not, the fact remains that as soon as the U.S. learned of the leaks they took prompt action to forestall the ability of AQ and the Taliban to act on those leaks, which forever screwed up the possibility of conclusively determining which particular individuals would or would not have been slain.

That the threat was mitigated doesn't mean there wasn't an existential threat though, nor does it need a jury of 12 people to demonstrate what is plainly obvious: Loose Lips Sink Ships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >> "stated under oath when examined by the defense counsel that there was no harm whatsoever"

First, I don't actually believe that the Wikileaks releases (Manning's) really caused that much damage, in fact we came out smelling like roses in most cases, our allies however frequently looked like asses (think Saudis wanting to tag gitmo inmates with bird trackers).

The thing here to consider is 1) by the Wikileaks statement above it would seem that the purpose was never to counter US interests [calling bullshit here, support or oppose Assange/WL != pro US gov], so it is disingenuous at best to us the lack of damaging information to suggest that WL was not an anti-USG group.

Is the Disney film less than fully accurate? I'd bet so, it's a commercial endeavor.

I'm more disappointed that Wikileaks chose to focus on the USG and GB than all of the upstanding states around the world like Syria, Russia, North Korea, and China. Sure, when the US fucks up, call us out on it, that's part of an informed democracy.

WL/Assange pretended to be the vanguard of transparency (and when they first announced such ambitions I actually was rooting for them). Instead of focusing on the most opaque and oppressive governments, they focused on finding the warts on governments that by and large are respective of human rights. Russia? Fuck it you get a pass because Assange doesn't have ricin-proof pants yet. NK? Do you know how hard it is to get documents from there?

</rant>

Seriously though, I am disappointed. When they stood up I thought they were going to actually go after folks who actively opposed free speech and human rights. Instead they went after the targets that were easiest to create media stories out of. I would like for Wikileaks to get the memos on the election rigging in Azerbaijan, I would like for them to get the UN memos between RF and Syria. To borrow the line from Rick, I don't mind a whistle blower, I just mind a cut rate one.

<comment><USER8> I haven't browsed through much of Wikileaks, butt I was under the impression that they do leak documents from many governments, not solely the US or GB. However, is it a surprise that the documents that get the most press are US- related? And, after all, the bigger the government, the bigger the paper trail / surface area for leaks.

<comment><USER7> There are pathetically few documents on WL from governments with truly atrocious human rights records. There are more documents from fucking fraternities than oppressive governments. Governments are pretty reliable, there are documents even in the most dysfunctional governments.

Wikileaks is less interested in publishing these than anything that is embarrassing to the US/UK. I know I'm throwing HN Karma down the toilet here, but really, while the behavior of the USG is far far from ideal, the behavior of Wikileaks is also so, and in a more insidious manner since its silence on more oppressive governments gives them validation.

Also for those downvoting, please see my other posts. I am not blindly pro-USG or anti-whistleblower. I have more complicated feelings regarding Snowden but wrt Wikileaks I have been disappointed in their focus. I feel this is a valid concern as the obsession with taking the US down a peg also gives validation to those oppressing their own people. Taking the US down a peg and denouncing real atrocities should not be incompatible. I feel that Wikileaks has sacrificed the more valuable duty of the latter in favor of the former.

<comment><USER9> You are jumping to a lot of conclusions regarding WL's agenda, when it is quite possible the reason most of the documents are from the US/UK simply because they are reasonably easy to get leaks from compared to more brutal regimes.

<comment><USER7> This is no doubt true (it's easier in the US than NK), but as I commented below, they posted that they had some stuff on Russia, and then shut the hell up about it. What is the takeaway?

<comment><USER10> Sometimes, painful compromises need to be made? Pick your battles, fight one bad guy at a time. Would you rather have Snowden in jail?

Also, as a non-US citizen, I think it's justified targeting the US specifically, because they have an inordinate amount of influence on global policies (basically, they force their laws on everybody else through so-called trade agreements)

<comment><USER3> The change in WikiLeaks's tune regarding Russia _far_ predates Snowden.

Assange was using Russian state media (RT) as a mouthpiece for a television show of his before Snowden as well. I believe one of his first interviews was with the leader of Hezbollah, of all people.

<comment><USER10> I stand corrected. My general point still holds, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very insightful for me the most interesting part was near the end where it outlines -

"The most significant journalists and whistleblowers in the world (that) are either political exiles, political prisoners, or the targets of criminal investigations by an overreaching security state."

Many of these I had heard of but many more I had not... It's a little chilling honestly.

</comment><comment><USER12> This movie seems a lot more like character assassination than either fictionalized storytelling or documentary. It's not as though the Wikileaks story lacks drama, moral ambiguity, or a couple of clear villains when told accurately. This begs the question - why give a wildly inaccurate version of events if it isn't significantly enriching the film?

<comment><USER13> You answered that question in your first sentence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a press release, not an internal memo.

</comment><comment><USER15> "internal"

I don't believe for a second this document wasn't intended for public release from the outset.

<comment><USER16> Their raison d'être is transparency, but publicising an internal memo doesn't magically turn it into a press release. It is clearly structured and written for WikiLeaks affiliated staff to use when discussing the film, anything else is a bonus.

<comment><USER3> Correction: Their raison d'être _used_ to be transparency. They are certainly willing _now_ to hold onto documents that do not advance their own political agenda.

Likewise the memo is sitting on a public folder on wikileaks.org, I'm pretty sure Assange or his troops could hack together a private intranet _if_ that was what was actually desired here. This is a PR release that is just as transparent as when the U.S. "leaks" positive news to the NYT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Couldn't they sue the film-makers for defamation / libel / slander (whichever one it is) for the "2,000 informants harmed" claim?

Be hard for the "Based on a true story" defense to work for that I would think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Although it contains real names and real places, the film will justify itself as fictional making it harder to target for defamation / libel / slander.

Edit: Another way the film can get off the hook is by claiming the information depicted is based on the sources (books) it uses for forming the script. I can only speculate, but what matters is shaping the public opinion and they are doing it by leaking the script and expressing their opposition to it.

Another guess is they need definitive evidence before sueing the film/makers. To quote from their memo: "Although the film has premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and numerous other media organizations have been shown review copies, the studio continues to refuse to show the film to WikiLeaks staff."

<comment><USER17> That would seem like a _very_ flimsy defence. If I were wikileaks I would be arguing that one.

<comment><USER18> certainly in the UK weasel words get you precisely nowhere in Libel. If you know what you were saying, and your audience knew it too, then you can be sued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can ayone explain this statement that Wikileaks makes?

      Sarah Harrison, the WikiLeaks journalist who accompanied
      Edward Snowden from Hong Kong and assisted his successful
      asylum bid, is in effective exile in Russia.

Why is she 'effectively in exile'? What would she be charged with if she returned to the UK?

<comment><USER20> Aiding and Abetting, maybe. She'd certainly be arrested and interrogated, and then potentially be charged with contempt if she refused under order to disclose other information she may know about Snowden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's a shame such a remarkably terrible film had such a good lead. Now I can't watch any of his other works.

</comment><comment><USER19> We should look at the finances of the film and see if the USG helped to fund it.

</comment><comment><USER21> This kind of movie is called Propaganda. But oh, wait, there is no such thing in a democracy..errrr...</comment>


CVE 2017-5135 SNMP authentication bypass (StringBleed) - <AUTHOR> https://stringbleed.github.io/ <comment><USER2> Its 2017 and we are still seeing SNMP vulnerabilities in Cisco equipment.

What kind of development and QA process did these people have when ios was created?</comment>


Show HN: 40+ Transparent Startups sharing their Revenue Numbers and Journeys - <AUTHOR> http://www.transparentstartups.com/about <comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on this side project for the last 3 months, mostly nights and weekends. I've just implemented the latest bits for this initial MVP, including a new brand identity.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Particularly:

\- Can you understand what is the project about in less than 10 seconds?

\- Is the message clear enough about what a "Transparent Startup" is?

\- Do you like the new Logo? What about the UI design and UX?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Come on guys, give me some honest feedback!

<comment><USER2> You got it a couple weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12606843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12606843)

<comment><AUTHOR> True. I've listened to the feedback and worked on making clear the message and what transparency means for the startup world. Still no sure if the About page, Submit page and tagline are clear enough for the purpose.

I also had some critiques about the logo ([https://www.producthunt.com/tech/transparent- startups-2](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/transparent-startups-2)), so I decided to change it as well.

I'd appreciate new feedback about these points.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I hate Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/20/markets/thebuzz/?postversion=2009022012

<comment><USER2> Summary: Bearded gentleman "hates" Facebook because he doesn't think they'll be able to monetize their traffic, and doesn't like being shown ads.

Not a very satisfying article. He doesn't really say anything that hasn't been said a thousand times before. Also, the ad thing? Now, I hate ads, I love Opera's content blocker, and I have to admit that Facebook is the only site that has ever shown me ads I want to click. I even bought something from a Facebook ad once!

<comment><USER3> Please never do that again, you'll only encourage them. Nobody (except you, I guess) wants to see or click on ads while they're reading up on their friends lives. And honestly, fb ads are pretty terribly awful.

You've never seen ads you want to click on Google? Even when you're searching for things to buy?

<comment><USER2> Facebook's ads aren't intrusive; the pictures are very small and the ads are way off on the side of the page (unless there are some I don't know about due to my content blocker). The only time I even notice them is when something interesting catches my eye.

There are two reasons not to like ads: 1) They are intrusive/distracting; and 2) They show you stuff you don't care about. If Facebook can occasionally show me ads for things I might actually want, and if they can do so in a way that doesn't intrude on my browsing experience, kudos to them.

Edit: Oh, forgot to answer your question. No, I don't think I've ever seen an ad on Google that interested me. I don't really use Google to find things to buy, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Strange. It's as if CNN decided they better get hip and make the site more bloggish, and then they copied the wrong things about blogging.

</comment><comment><USER5> Guy who (admittedly) doesn't use Facebook hates Facebook. News at 11.

We've seen this before in other forms:

Guy who (admittedly) doesn't use Twitter hates Twitter. News at 11.

Guy who (admittedly) doesn't read blogs hates blogs. News at 11.

 _yawn_

<comment><USER6> I hate when hating popular things becomes vogue. It's one thing to rant about it in an enclosed area, but it's hardly news.

<comment><USER5> I just think its funny that the "Guy who (admittedly) doesn't use" writes a column about his hate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article is bad and silly. :( I don't know why CNN is publishing some dude's inane diary.

The author assumes that using Facebook and using Facebook obsessively are the same thing; he complains that after using a computer at work all day, he doesn't want to use one all night, and that he doesn't see the need to update everyone about the minor details in his life, and that these are why he detests Facebook. The author seemingly doesn't realize that Facebook does not force you to input every minor detail of your life nor does it force you to spend your entire evenings in the perusal of its pages. When one checks Facebook merely periodically, and rarely updates, there are times when it comes in mighty handy, and it's silly for this man to write the whole service off to everyone else because he doesn't believe that anyone can use Facebook moderately (for the record, I log in to check things about twice a week and update my profile about twice a year).

Even less sensibly, the author also hates Facebook because he doesn't see an immediately obvious plan for profitability. This is a really weird reason to hate something that you hold no financial interest in (and the author clearly has none in Facebook). If dude thinks that Facebook's operations will continually yield negative cash flow, that's even more reason to _enjoy it while it lasts_. Seriously.

</comment><comment><USER8> With a title like that, I thought it was going to be a Matt Maroon article.</comment>


Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor - <AUTHOR> http://foicica.com/textadept

<comment><USER2> Suggestion about the website: Please include a separate section called "Screenshots". A lot of people directly click there to get a feel of the software before they download.

<comment><AUTHOR> Screenshot with dark theme: <http://i.imgur.com/oqByS.png>

<comment><USER3> Scrollbar chrome makes me instantly lose interest.

If there was a screenshot without this (is there a terminal version?), I would regain interest. Screenshots are important especially to people like me who may or may not care. They're the fastest way for a potential user to answer the question: is this worth caring about at all.

Some questions you can answer with screenshots:

\- Does it run on my platform?

\- Are there any glaringly ugly things about it that will be a dealbreaker?

\- Is it more beautiful/cool than what I'm already using?

\- To what extent can it be customized?

\- What kind of people are using it (if you have user screenshots)?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Scrollbar chrome makes me instantly lose interest.

Scrollbar issue is with my XFCE theme, not textadept.

> If there was a screenshot without this (is there a terminal version?), I > would regain interest

Gnome terminal, windowed: <http://i.imgur.com/Dfh6o.png> Gnome terminal, fullscreen: <http://i.imgur.com/6yoil.png>

> Does it run on my platform?

Runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

> Are there any glaringly ugly things about it that will be a dealbreaker?

I don't see any.

> Is it more beautiful/cool than what I'm already using?

Well, it depends on what you find more beautiful/cool :) For example, it's similar to my current GVim setup: <http://i.imgur.com/djaLS.png>

> To what extent can it be customized?

It seems that most of it is written in Lua (except the core), so it seems pretty extensible <http://foicica.com/textadept/11_Scripting.html>

> What kind of people are using it (if you have user screenshots)?

Can't help you with this :)

<comment><USER4> Does this support tiled windows in a terminal like Vim or Emacs? Relying on a terminal multiplexer to provide that is less than ideal I think.

Looks good otherwise. Not to my taste, but it is refreshing to see a new text editor that actually seems like it was written by someone who understands the variety of use-cases of text editors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Unparalleled extensibility.

A bold claim to make when your competition includes Vim and Emacs.

Is there some kind of feature comparison somewhere? Or any particular highlights? The feature list is a nice start, but basically what I would expect of any decent editor anyway (except for code completion).

<comment><USER6> Don't forget about Notepad++ (Windows only though) and Sublime Text (best text rendering I've seen yet), which I'd argue are also valid comparisons - yes, even to Vim/Emacs.

That being said, I did have a quick look through the Textadept manual, and there are quite indeed a few useful and unique features... Whether or not this indicates "unparalled" extensibility though, is another matter all together.

<comment><USER7> IMO you can't compare an editor to Vim/Emacs if it can't run in a console.

<comment><USER8> IMO Vim is highly overrated, and its _only_ selling point is that it can run in a console.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a little off-putting that the documentation brags about the low line count without mentioning the use of Scintilla, which already implements _most of a text editor_. Still, I'm willing to give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just tried the Linux version and I like it! If the Windows version is portable, I'll carry it around on my USB stick.

<comment><USER11> The Windows version is quite portable if you manually set the .textadept home to your USB stick. A while ago I wrote a Portable Apps launcher [1] that did that automatically for you, haven't used it in quite a while though. (I wrote this before GTK was included in the Windows package.)

[1] <https://github.com/rgieseke/textadept-portable>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> And a youtube video showing Textadept with some third party plugin: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSAinGsc7dA>

</comment><comment><USER13> OK, so I find Sublime Text 2 extremely perfect for my needs... now how does this thing beat pure perfection? ;)

<comment><USER14> I tried using Sublime Text 2 but it has no ability to toggle automatic updating of changed files, unlike Notepad++ for example.

<comment><USER13> Yeah it does auto-update changed files by default, but you can enable the option to highlight unsaved files more prominently (should be on by default really) so such cases for me always show up on my radar immediately. And then a simple Ctrl+Z reverts the file to whatever was in that editor-buffer beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sadly, on the Mac, this doesn't feel like a native application and things like changing the size of the window are broken. Also, a horizontal scrollbar appearing in an empty text window is strange. Might work great on Linux and I like the idea but the execution on Mac leaves a lot to be desired.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I tried the 'source-map' layout but it won't remember the zoom levels when re-opening a session. <http://i.imgur.com/mxYO0.png>

And it doesn't use Exposé for windows, at all. That's a shame. I'd like to have several editor windows open, with separate buffer lists.

I like where they're going with it, but are they there yet? Meh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone tried this out in terminal (ncurses version). I get an error on osx, so i can't load a file. I get this if I give a file on command line.

> ....0.osx/Textadept.app/Contents/Resources/core/file_io.lua:143: bad > argument #1 to 'iconv' (string expected, got nil)

Open file (M-S-O) does nothing.

Tried C-u (snapopen) and get a similar iconv error:

> pt.app/Contents/Resources/modules/textadept/snapopen.lua:67: bad argument #1 > to 'iconv' (string expected,

I am executing the textadept-ncurses.osx file. Thx. Please note that <backspace> is acting like a TAB but C-h is working correctly.

</comment><comment><USER7> I didn't see this in the Debian repository yet? Years of experience have taught me that 99% of the time if a project isn't in the Debian repo it isn't mature yes or useful to more than a small niche and probably not worth my time. The 1% that is missing there is when I am part of the small niche.

Not meant as an attack or anything. Just an observation and possibly a 'marketing' suggestion if you'd like more users.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does the "toggle block comment" option actually work (Ctrl+/)? Tried it with python (file saved with .py ext and syntax highlighting even showed up), but couldn't comment with that keybinding...

edit: block commenting didn't even work when selecting it from the Edit menu.

<comment><USER11> By default comment strings are not defined in core Textadept. Add them like this:

<http://foicica.com/wiki/comment-supplemental>

Or install the Python language module:

<http://foicica.com/hg/python/>

<comment><USER18> Awesome, thanks. I just added that comment string def to init.lua and it works great.

Edit: why is this not there by default? I'm not sure any developer would _not_ want a block commenting function...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just tried it out and parts of the ncurses UI seems less responsive than I'm used to in vim. For example, try hitting ctrl-alt-f for incremental find, then hit esc to leave it. It seems to take a second to exit incremental find mode. Does anybody else see this?

</comment><comment><USER20> About that extensibility, would it be possible to implement inline diffs? (Paint margin green for added lines, show a red marker for deleted lines.)

<comment><USER11> The (deprecated) debug module has some screen shots that show margin markers:

<http://foicica.com/wiki/lua-debugger>

The styling and symbol choice is configurable.

Not sure how inline diff works though (for deleted lines), do you have an example in another editor?

<comment><USER20> Here is how Netbeans does it: [http://netbeans.org/projects/versioncontrol/pages/Git_ui#Inl...](http://netbeans.org/projects/versioncontrol/pages/Git_ui#Inline_diff_- _show_local_modifications_in_a_files_sidebar)

<comment><USER11> What I see on the screenshots there should be possible in Textadept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> <rant>That's great. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to vim and gcc, because I don't have a cross-platform open source IDE that has been "relentlessly optimized" for my language of choice, to look slick, to not consume gigs of RAM and to not stop the world while I'm typing some text. What I have is a long list of text editors. Oh, here's another one. That's great.</rant>

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks interesting, does it support TTY mode? I might try it.

<comment><USER23> From the link:

      > "The version of Textadept for the terminal requires only ncurses."

I suppose that would fit?

I notice that some keyboard bindings[1] are different in "Terminal"-mode (I suspect that means in terminal on GNU/Linux and possibly *BSD, but I suppose it might include MS Windows cmd.com (if supported) and OS X Terminal as well) -- as compared to the GUI-variants (MS Windows and OS X appear to just substitute control for command - while the "Terminal"-variant uses e.g. meta- control-n, rather than just meta-n or control-n for new file).

I think I'll stick with VIM, thanks. Still having another powerful editor available isn't a bad thing.

[1] [http://foicica.com/textadept/api/_M.textadept.keys.html#Key....](http://foicica.com/textadept/api/_M.textadept.keys.html#Key.Bindings)

<comment><USER11> The terminal version works only on Unix/BSD, but it was only introduced in 5.5. (Which means there might be glitches as well on Linux.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> let's see when will first vi plugin for it come out..

</comment><comment><USER25> Have you seen the scroll bars on this thing? Or the Icon? No way I'm using this on OSX...

<comment><USER26> Imagine your friends see this app running on your computer, i mean gooosh.... whatevahhh they wouldn't invite you to their minimalism exquisite design parties anymore.

<comment><USER25> I know you Linux guys are used to every app having a completely different look and feel, but on the mac this app just doesn't feel native.

But your story was cool too...

<comment><USER27> Wow, what a _incredibly_ stupid troll. Could you paint a bigger "I parrot decade old OS stereotypes" on your forehead?

Especially when this is most likely to integrate in Linux, given that it will follow your GTK theme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What does this do that Vim doesn't? I'm just not sure I see any selling points. You can extend Vim with Lua, vim has multiple viewports, support for hundreds of languages, and all the other features like code complete, etc... What itch is this supposed to scratch, that something like Vim, a proven project, cannot? I understand that every developer wants to carve his name out and be king of his own sandcastle. But as a rule, I don't support that unless the developer has really thought about the problem and decided that a new project was the only way to solve a problem.

<comment><USER29> > What does this do that Vim doesn't?

It's not vim. That alone will be a selling point for a vast majority.

<comment><USER30> I didn't realize a vast majority were nincompoops.

<comment><USER29> >> It's not vim. That alone will be a selling point for a vast majority.

> I didn't realize a vast majority were nincompoops.

I am a long time vim user. Where do I get in line for obtaining my free-with- vim pretentiousness and douchbagginess? Or it doesn't come with Vim and it's just you?

<comment><USER30> At least you found the line for cant see when someone's being facetious.

<comment><USER29> > At least you found the line for cant see when someone's being facetious

You are a fucking asshole.

Ha, ha. Just kidding. You just don't get my flippant sense of humor.

Sorry. This doesn't work for me. Being facetious is different from being a jerk.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I'm a C# MVC guy. What web technologies should I learn for freelancing? - <AUTHOR>

After 5 years doing ASP.NET MVC full time I've started a B Comp Sci degree for several reasons. Since starting, not having that daily programming work has me itching to do some freelancing projects. I might not be ready to commit a lot of time right now, but come semester break I could be in a good position to get some work done.
I've got some smaller projects already lined up without any real deadlines (they are for people I know) but the problem (if it is a problem?) is that I haven't developed many web apps outside of my usual domain (C#).
I'm very comfortable with the MVC paradigm and would love to find another language/framework that matches (or approaches) the niceness of working in C# and Razor-Engine, but doesn't have the same software costs associated with it.
I've toyed around with AngularJS (using mock data in js) and thought that it could be powered by a nodejs backend (or something else). Angular templating is similar to what I've done before, and I like that it's just regular HTML. Even with jQuery-mobile it loads very fast on the smartphones/tablets that I tested.
I also played around with nodejs, Express, Jade and Mongodb. Jade is nice for simpler templates, but after a while the indentation just gets messy for hairy ones. Using a bunch of technologies that are just javascript seemed great in theory, but I was quickly getting annoyed at how messy the code was getting, even for a simple application. Mongodb started frustrating me as the schema got more complicated, but perhaps that is just because I don't have much experience with NoSQL.
The obvious choice seems to be learn Ruby, and then Rails. I've tried a couple of times to learn it. I don't know why but for some reason I just don't get it. Should I stick it out?
What technologies are fellow HN'ers using for freelancing projects?
Oh wise HN, please help me :) <comment><USER2> Specifically where were you getting stuck with Ruby/Rails? My background is C#/ASP.NET MVC too. The structure of a rails app is not all that different to that of an ASP.NET MVC app. The biggest challenge for me was adjusting to all the extra syntactic sugar in Ruby compared to C#.

Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial was what I used when picking up Rails. <http://ruby.railstutorial.org/>

railsguides.com has some pretty great videos on using different rails libraries.

If you're really not a fan of the Ruby syntax, maybe something like Python with Django would suit you better.

If it's missing the Visual Studio IDE that's giving you trouble you might want to check out the RubyMine IDE (made by the same devs as the Resharper VS add- on).

<comment><AUTHOR> In line with what you said, the syntactic sugar of Ruby is what put me off.

Having a good IDE like Visual Studio is nice, but I find myself working in ST3 or LightTable often, so its not essential. As long as I can build from my editor, I'm happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's wrong with C#? It seems like you like the language and are only concerned about the software costs, so Mono would be an obvious option to look into. And the compatibility has improved quite a bit, to the point that there are quite a few projects that support multiple platforms:

<http://www.servicestack.net/>

<http://nancyfx.org/>

<http://monogame.codeplex.com/>

<http://monocross.net/>

<https://github.com/markrendle/Simple.Web>

<comment><AUTHOR> You make a good point. I haven't touched mono for a long time, so maybe it is worth another look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you considered PHP? That would be the cheapest alternative, and there are more MVC frameworks for PHP than there are for all other platforms (probably combined). There are many templating solutions as well, but PHP is already a templating language anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not ever seriously. I've always hated how bloated the core of php is. I've also read too much Coding Horror.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am a C# guy who recently picked up Python, and haven't looked back :). Nice thing about Python is that it plays well with Windows.

<comment><USER6> This sounds a lot like me. I am a .NET developer by day, but I like to write Python when I get home. I don't know if Python is good enough for me to ever want to make the switch in my full-time career, but it's still fantastic to use with Django.</comment></comment>


Introducing PaaSTA: An Open, Distributed, Platform as a Service - <AUTHOR> http://engineeringblog.yelp.com/2015/11/introducing-paasta-an-open-platform-as-a-service.html <comment><USER2> Can't wait until it evolves into code Spaaghetti ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks very interesting, especially if community involvement ramps up to patch over the relatively rough[0] open sourcing that's happened here.

The blog post seems more descriptive of 'what' and not 'how' any of this works, so this page may be more informative:

[http://paasta.readthedocs.org/en/latest/installation/getting...](http://paasta.readthedocs.org/en/latest/installation/getting_started.html)

[0]: not a bad thing! raw code is better than no code!

</comment><comment><USER4> Be interesting to compare this to mantl.io, which I think has a bit broader reach in terms of components but is otherwise very similar.

These projects could really take off if that initial "bring it up" stage is a bit easier - deploying turn-key apps is great, but there's not much reason an opinionated stack itself can't be turn-key too.

</comment><comment><USER5> > It is not optimized to be simple to deploy for operators. [1]

Isn't the whole point of a PaaS to be easily deployable so that I don't have to learn a bunch of other tools, that depend on a bunch of other tools, that... You get the point.

[1] [http://paasta.readthedocs.org/en/latest/installation/getting...](http://paasta.readthedocs.org/en/latest/installation/getting_started.html)

<comment><USER6> I don't think this is for devs who want an alternative to Heroku, Modulus or whatever PaaS you prefer, but to people who want to build their own PaaS for their internal developers.

<comment><USER5> > but to people who want to build their own PaaS for their internal developers

I don't understand this. Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER6> So, the use case for Heroku is straightforward: you have a webapp that you need to get online. You signup, do a 'git push heroku master' and your application is online.

Say instead that you are Yelp, you have a couple hundred developers all of whom are clamouring for the same ease of deployment that they can get with Heroku but that's not appropriate for a whole bunch of reasons (lots of internal apps for accounting or credit stuff, a custom HR app, who knows) and at Yelp's scale it is cost effective to start having devops/sysadmin type people on staff instead of just rolling that into your Heroku costs.

So the answer is that you use something like this deployed to your own hardware in house, or you use Deis or Convox or some other Docker solution to deploy to AWS or a bunch of Virtual Private Servers or something. This gives you a good management and deploy experience at a fraction of the cost (not counting that you have to buy your own hardware and also pay a competent Devops person $100k+ a year).

<comment><USER7> I'm late to this thread, but an easier solution is to take a full-featured PaaS and install that instead.

I work on Cloud Foundry. Some people use OpenShift. Both are featuresome and don't require much more than to install them and start pushing apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > At Yelp we believe in not reinventing the wheel where possible.

Then... why invent your own platform instead of just using Cloud Foundry[0]?

[0]: [https://www.cloudfoundry.org/](https://www.cloudfoundry.org/)

<comment><USER9> It seems like they value the flexibility to mix and match and change components over time, rather than the simplicity of adopting an integrated solution like CloudFoundry or OpenShift.</comment></comment>


Innovator of Cyptography Technology Wins ACM Dissertation Award - <AUTHOR> http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2014/dissertation-award-13

<comment><USER2> The dissertation in question:

[http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~sanjamg/Sanjam%20Garg_files/sanjam-t...](http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~sanjamg/Sanjam%20Garg_files/sanjam- thesis.pdf)

Garg's work has been very influential, even comparable to Craig Gentry's fully homomorphic encryption breakthrough. Like FHE, the influence has been mostly theoretical so far, but history has shown that things that appear theoretical today can be practical tomorrow. I'm not holding my breath, though.

While obfuscation has been the most touted application of the multilinear maps, another straightforward application of these maps is for single-round N-party Diffie-Hellman. Consider a map that respects f(G, G)^ab = f(aG, G)^b = f(G, bG)^a = f(aG, bG). Then 3 parties A, B, C, with secret keys a,b,c can agree on a shared key by broadcasting aG, bG, and cG (let's assume that the discrete logarithm is hard in this group). The shared key will be f(aG, bG)^c = f(aG, cG)^b = f(bG, cG)^a = f(G, G)^abc. This was in fact one of the first applications of bilinear maps via the Weil pairing, discovered by Joux [1].

There's an obvious generalization of the concept to N parties with an (N-1)-linear map, but until recently no cryptographically useful maps had been discovered for this effect.

[1] [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00145-004-0312-y...](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00145-004-0312-y#page-1)

<comment><USER3> Have any _real_ multilinear map constructions been discovered? I thought all extant ones were approximations, e.g. graded encoding schemes.

<comment><USER2> No, not that I know of. You're of course right that what exists today are approximations. But the maps can be made to work for any given n, so we can pretend they're 'real'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty neat stuff. It suggests that you can run trusted code on an un- trusted machine, and trust the results, all while not revealing the code. Imagine "your homework is correct" without "here are the answers."

There may be limitations, this is denser than I can really parse, but if this is open ended, it could lead to some interesting use cases.

On the down side, obfuscation appears to win, which I did not expect.

<comment><USER5> From the explanation, the obfuscation seems to be akin to encryption in that it is easy to go from normal code to obfuscated, but difficult to go back.</comment></comment>


How to run Angular 2 in production today - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jhades.org/how-to-run-angular-2-in-production-today/ <comment><AUTHOR> This has a couple of simple methods to have an application up and running today, with an eye on migrating it to the angular-cli standard project setup in the near future.</comment>


Ask HN: How to fake a quiet work environment to oneself?  - <AUTHOR>

I work around people who talk to one another at length. I can't focus when someone is talking right next to me. Putting on headphones distracts me too because I start paying attention to the music/lyrics etc so that isn't an option. I like deep focus, and can focus deeply for length and often, however I need it to be quiet for me to do so.<p>Apart from sticking buds in my ears (and seeming uninterested or weird), what can I do or listen to? I have heard that when people go boar hunting, they use tractors whose constant engine noise is phased out by the animal, could I wild-boar myself? <comment><USER2> I know what you mean. It's hard to work or study around chatty people or where one can hear a radio or TV going. Having abnormally good hearing doesn't help much either.

Recordings of natural acoustic environments (rainfall, seashore) work for some people. I find classical music with slow tempos does the job for me; I sometimes break off to listen, but shortish micro-breaks are a good thing. The good thing about classical music is that there are a lot of long-form pieces, like symphonies that last an hour or opera that lasts 2 or more. Alternatively, you could go looking through the ambient electronic music genre, which tends towards ethereal and spacey sounds rather than being built around hooks, choruses, and musical climaxes. Brian Eno is a good artist to start with.

</comment><comment><USER3> In-ear earbuds are basically earplugs, without the social stigma; of course, you may feel like a bit of a tool for wearing headphones to avoid the shame of earplugs.

Classical or instrumental music might be also worth a try if you haven't tried it already; post-rock works well for me.

As for phasing it out, unfortunately conversation is much harder to tune out than thing like engine noise. Our brains are designed to pay attention to talking, and the intensity and tone are constantly changing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use a noise generator.

Noisy - <http://code.google.com/p/noisy/>

Turn it on and - for me - it sounds incredibly distracting. A few minutes later I don't notice it all and the background distractions fade away.

I've used it at work, I've used it at home. Recommended.

</comment><comment><USER5> www.simplynoise.com has been a lifesaver for me in similar situations.</comment>


Ask HN: Career Development Plans. Is there a point to this madness? - <AUTHOR>

I have never really gotten anything out of "Career Development Plans". In the end they just seem to add overhead to the task I already don't have enough time to accomplish. Actually, each time the development planning period comes a long I start looking for new jobs. I see these as a useless exercise when in the end real work gets in the way of achieving these "goals".<p>Why do companies, especially older or larger corporations, seem so set on this method? Do you find value in the process? Is it really "career development"  if it's not something I want to do? What is so wrong with not wanting to move up or being happy with the amount of responsibility (or maybe work/life balance) you currently have? <comment><USER2> Assume for a moment that organizations are information technologies. If that's the case, then processing units are the firm's humans, plus whatever mechanized information systems they have.

Now, unlike mechanical systems, human components of this larger IT network are far less modular. Certain positions require decades of experience and knowledge in order to perform optimally. You can't merely buy a person off the rack to slot into your organization if you have particular needs for their position.

From the perspective of an organization, then, in order to ensure continuity of capacity of a system, niche capacities need to be actively cultivated. If your position as X manager is part of their VP of X pipeline, then the organization's ability to selectively pick people who would be best suited for grooming into the VP of X position could be vital to their staffing strategy.

That said, this assumes a certain approach to developing capacity within firms (one, however, that is excessively common), which itself is a strategy choice mediated by a number of factors, including the firm's attractiveness to hires from the outside. If you're Google, for instance, you likely have the ability to pull the capacity you need from the market if its a generalized asset.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is why I have a problem with the term "career development" in general. My career will never revolve around any one company. It sounds more like it's employee development for the benefit of the company not the employee's career.

<comment><USER2> Well, you're probably right. There's a conflict of interest with respect to developing an employee's career from the perspective of the employee and the firm. Both want what's best for themselves.

One of the big concepts in negotiation theory, has been the rise of interest harmonization, wherein parties attempt to figure out how to make their dealings with others create shared interests. If successful these efforts might make career development efforts live up to their name.</comment></comment></comment>


What Will Google Do With $42.6 Billion War Chest? - <AUTHOR> http://www.talkincloud.com/what-will-google-do-with-42-6-billion-war-chest/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR

"We are a blog about cloud services. We have no idea what Google will do with their war chest, but one guess is that they might spend some of it to acquire cloud service companies. Or maybe acquire other kinds of companies or hire more people. We don't really know."

</comment><comment><USER3> The enormous cash reserves in companies like Apple and Google represent significant accumulations of unproductive capital. If these and other large reserves were invested instead, the positive impact on the economy might be substantial. Should we start limiting the cash reserves a corporation can accumulate?

<comment><USER4> No.

<comment><USER3> Insightful.

So the argument in favor is that corporations are publicly chartered and have an obligation to act in the public interest, companies with publicly traded stock even more so. Sucking capital out of the market and leaving it sitting on a shelf while the broader economy stagnates seems contrary to the public interest, so limits on corporate cash reserves should be enacted. Anyone care to elaborate an argument against such a limit?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Buy these countries?

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=gdp+of+benin+%2B+togo+%...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=gdp+of+benin+%2B+togo+%2B+ghana+%2B+liberia+%2B+sierra+leone+%2B+senegal)

</comment><comment><USER6> Pay taxes?</comment>


How we massively reduced our AWS Lambda bill with Go - <AUTHOR> https://runbook.cloud/blog/posts/how-we-massively-reduced-our-aws-lambda-bill-with-go/ <comment><USER2> If I read it right, the point the author is making is that a language with syntax support for concurrency (such as Go) is a more cost-effective choice for a serverless architecture than a language that doesn't (such as JS) because you can perform multiple tasks at once in a single Lambda instance, ex. querying 15 AWS regions per instance rather than creating 15 instances that query 1 region each.

I'm skeptical why this would not be possible in Javascript as well on a single Lambda with continuation passing or async/await, unless I'm missing something fundamental about the serverless JS runtime, or the author is only pointing out Go's readability advantage.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point I was trying to make was to disagree with someone who was was saying Node doesn't make sense for Lambda because you should only be doing a single task.

I absolutely think Go is more readable, but as you say Javascript can do this fine too.</comment></comment>


Software Job Matcher – Quickly match your experience to jobs - <AUTHOR> http://match.talenthunch.com/ <comment><USER2> Conflating github projects as being "your experience", is not really sensible really. After all, github is only 8 years old at this point, and many real world projects (ie the day job where your experience lies) can't be in github public repositories. (And for many predate the existance of github)

For a selection of good reasons as to why using github like this is a bad metric take a look at:

[https://blog.jcoglan.com/2013/11/15/why-github-is-not- your-c...](https://blog.jcoglan.com/2013/11/15/why-github-is-not-your-cv/)

(There are lots of good counterpoints to the arguments there in the hackernews discussion of that post here - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6738952) \- but personally I still think it's incredibly dangerous to start assuming that you can really measure experience from github.

After all, do you also include repositories forked, but not worked on? If so, it'd be incredibly easy to game this...

As a toy it seems kinda fun/neat, but as a tool... far less so.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just a note: If I input an invalid username there are no projects but I am not notified that the username was non-existing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Developer here: Thanks for that. Yep, I haven't worked out a nice way to present that notification yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Neat tool, but the results are disappointing for me. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Developer here: Thanks. It becomes more useful with the more language experience you have. Plus, if the languages you use are less common then it will struggle to return relevant job matches.</comment></comment>


Show HN: One bar to rule them all - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/one-bar-to-rule-them-all-38150817f976 <comment><AUTHOR> How does it work in your company? Which systems do you use and how do you manage to search across them. Please comment!</comment>


Microsoft releases Windows Embedded Compact 7 (aka Microsoft tablet OS?) - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=0a8709b5-bd03-4387-8a10-bf3f9aa94ede&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+MicrosoftDownloadCenter+%28Microsoft+Download+Center%29#QuickDetails

<comment><AUTHOR> Windows Embedded Compact 7 helps original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) get devices to market faster by providing developers with a complete catalog of tested, selectable OS components, integrated development and test tools, _source code access_ and board support packages. Compact 7 is compatible with ARM, x86 and MIPS processor architectures.</comment>


New Neuralink website gives more details on approach, goals and challenges - <AUTHOR> https://neuralink.com/approach/ <comment><USER2> Can't wait for Epic Games to sue Elon for rights to have their own telepathy- game App Store.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There are other pages too. Applications ([https://neuralink.com/applications/](https://neuralink.com/applications/)) has more details.</comment>


Ask HN: What happened to VLC on iOS? - <AUTHOR>

What happened to VLC on iOS? (open source video player)<p>It's not in the AppStore anymore. Is it only visible in specific countries? <comment><USER2> From memory distributing the GPL'd code that is part of VLC was mutually exclusive to the App Store DRM.

</comment><comment><USER3> Occasionally someone posts a version of VLC "officially" then it eventually gets removed because of GPL requests. The original one doesn't really work any more and there was one released recently that vanished before I could grab it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just checked, it doesn't appear in France.</comment>


Rosa Labs - <AUTHOR> http://www.rosalabs.com <comment><USER2> Well, that title change certainly made this post useless. The original was "Soylent is now Rosa Labs", which is a very informative title. The new title of "Rosa Labs" is infinitely more likely to get passed over or misunderstood (as well as making the comments hard to understand without visiting the site).

<comment><USER3> Don't worry too much about it. FWIW Whenever I see an item on the front page with a contextless title my first thought is that an administrator has changed it.

Back on topic, I'm glad they changed the name. Soylent always seemed like a funny joke they outgrew faster than they anticipated!

<comment><USER4> According to their website, this is just the name of the parent company that makes Soylent.

"Rosa Labs strives to create innovative nutritional products. Our first product is Soylent."

Doesn't seem like they are ditching the Soylent name for that particular product (I wonder what else they are working on?). For the record, I still like the name quite a bit. I've never understood why a reference to a sci-fi book got under anyones skin (pun not intended).

<comment><USER5> > I've never understood why a reference to a sci-fi book got under anyones > skin

Because some people apparently can't make the distinction between a movie and reality. O_o

Personally I thought it was a funny, tongue-in-cheek name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And they still haven't added anyone with nutritional science credentials to their team:

[http://www.rosalabs.com/team/](http://www.rosalabs.com/team/)

<comment><USER7> It's not so much just "adding" that person to their team so much.

In the medical community, there's very much the idea of keeping your credibility stable. You don't want to be the Chief Medical Officer of a product that has as much hype as Soylent, and then have it turn out to be fluff, or be horrendous for the human body.

Remember, Soylent isn't just being tested - they're already making pre-sales and shipping in early '14\. While there's been a lot of talk and debate about the product, there's been a relatively small amount of actual medical studies on how their formula effects our body's chemistry. As a doctor there's also the risk of breaking your own ethics and being the "Dr. who endorses Soylent".

Soylent as a product is incredibly young. Promising, but young. While I'm sure there're a number of MDs working on contract with their team, I'm also sure it'll be a little while before there's a real reputable MD or firm that'll be slapping their name on the product.

From a technical viewpoint, it's kind of like banking your entire career and credibility on a young company that has a lot of technical debt.

<comment><USER8> The end-product doesn't technically exist yet - it's still in "development" according to their most recent blog post.

[http://blog.soylent.me/post/65760097009/as-mentioned-in- the-...](http://blog.soylent.me/post/65760097009/as-mentioned-in- the-10-15-update-we-planned-to)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone else find it disingenuous that their homepage has the words "Welcome to Rosa Labs" backed by a stock photo of what must be a much larger lab? I doubt their "labs" look anything like that.

<comment><USER10> If that isn't actually their lab, yes, that's extremely disingenuous, and potentially even actionable.

<comment><USER11> It may be disingenuous, but actionable? I really, really doubt that.

<comment><USER10> California unfair competition law is pretty broad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit The name is not new... just new to us. :)

 _We have been doing business as Rosa Labs from the beginning, but wanted to wait a few months before publicizing anything other than the Soylent identity. Soylent Corporation would admittedly have been a pretty great name, but Rosa Labs will be a better platform for Soylent and any other projects we cook up._ [1]

[1] [http://blog.soylent.me/post/65760097009/as-mentioned-in- the-...](http://blog.soylent.me/post/65760097009/as-mentioned-in- the-10-15-update-we-planned-to)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it just me, or is it suddenly the cool thing to slap "labs" on the back of a company's name to make it sound more professional?

They've turned away from an interesting name that describes and differentiates themselves into a bland and boring "Rosa Labs."

Hmmm. Soylent, vs Rosa Labs.

I damn well know which one I'd pick.

<comment><USER2> "Labs" has been around forever to indicate a R&D company. Bell Labs was founded in 1925, and I'm willing to bet it wasn't the first "labs" company.

Picking a more professional name may make it easier to get funding and be taken seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Solyent brings out the cynic in me for some reason -- Rosa Labs and accompanying boilerplate just sounds like an attempt at preemptively legitimizing Soylent as a staggeringly important food replacement; the list of investors are simply black swan hunters and not indicative of the importance of the product.

I could be wrong and Soylent may actually be an important product spurring innovation in the ever so important food industry.

I normally gravitate towards the middle of the road opinion after identifying polar opposites, but for some reason I just can't shake the cynicism about this. It'll be interesting to watch what happens...

</comment><comment><USER14> Could we temper the negativity around here about companies like Twitter, Yelp & Groupon and products like Soylent? It's pretty clear the audience here has some sort of aggregated inability to spot large successes. I guess I can understand a certain amount of skepticism but it sure would be cool to see more "glass half full" sentiment here.

</comment><comment><USER15> 'Soylent' will forever be associated with 'Soylent Green is people' in my mind.

<comment><USER16> The way I see it, marketing wise, that's an absolutely great thing. After all, some of the big claims for Soylent are very people-oriented indeed.

Soylent aims to be very cheap indeed.

The net effect, in the affluent countries, will be that we beat junkfood companies at their own game, by providing a fully nutritious diet for less than a dollar a day.

The net effect, in the third world, will be to significantly reduce famine, by turning full nutrition into a staple powder that can be distributed without waste or decomposition to millions of poor people.

So, "Soylent is people", to me, couldn't be a better strapline. It's right up there with "Just do it".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The "parent company" is Rosa Labs but the product/brand remains Soylent.

</comment><comment><USER18> Especially after the admin name change, PLEASE move the soylent picture from last to first in the carousel. It took me a good 20 seconds to figure out what this was.

Here was my stream of consciousness: saw "welcome to Rosa Labs", jumped to the bottom and saw YCombinator, saw tweet about soylent, is this a soylent competitor? A non-related nutrition startup that keeps getting asked about soylent? A company independently reviewing soylent? Back to HN comments -> top post from freehunter about the admin name change -> oh! back to the website, read "Our first product is Soylent." in tiny text.

</comment><comment><USER19> I thought Rosa Linux has finally made it on the front page!

[http://www.rosalab.com/](http://www.rosalab.com/)

Clearly not the case. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> I love the fact that this site, the video, the whole thing appears to be entirely a spoof -- but it's just not.

</comment><comment><USER10> Are these people doing actual science?

</comment><comment><USER21> Why would I want to have a laboratory feed me when I can enjoy fresh vegetables and other real foods? What the hell is wrong with this world.</comment>


Cloud Vision API will not return gendered labels such as 'man' and 'woman' - <AUTHOR> I just received an email from Google Cloud Platform:
Hello Google Cloud Vision API customer,
We are writing to let you know that starting February 19, 2020, the Cloud Vision API will no longer return gendered labels such as 'man' and 'woman' that describe persons in an image when using the 'LABEL_DETECTION' feature.
What do I need to know?
As you know, the Cloud Vision API can perform feature detection on a local image file for the purpose of identifying persons by sending the contents of the image file through 'LABEL_DETECTION'.
Currently, when you request the API to annotate an image with labels, if you use this feature on images with people, it may return labels describing them in an image with gendered terms, like 'man' or 'woman'.
Given that a person's gender cannot be inferred by appearance, we have decided to remove these labels in order to align with the Artificial Intelligence Principles at Google, specifically Principle #2: Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias.
https://ai.google/principles/ <comment><USER2> > Given that a person's gender cannot be inferred by appearance, we have > decided to remove these labels in order to align with the Artificial > Intelligence Principles at Google, specifically Principle #2: Avoid creating > or reinforcing unfair bias.

Isn't this just outright wrong? A person's gender _can_ be inferred by appearance, and with extremely high accuracy at that.

<comment><USER3> While I tend to agree with you from a technical standpoint, I can't help but think Google is actually doing the morally correct thing here.

If organizations are creating systems using that API, most will just roll with man/woman labeling. If those systems are important, a lot of trans and non- binary people will end up fucked over.

At the end of the day, if the deprecated functionality is still needed, just set a threshold on masculine vs feminine. It's a far more elegant approach, even if more work.

<comment><USER4> I always get it confused: is it sex or gender that people can assign to themselves?

<comment><USER5> Are you really confused about this, or just rhetorically confused? You can answer the question by googling "sex vs gender".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another instance of SJW types causing problems in the coding world (although the vast majority of actual coders aren't on the SJW train).

The fact is gender can be determined by appearance in 99.5% of circumstances or more, which is probably higher than the overall accuracy of their ML labelling system.

The idea of "avoiding unfair bias" is highly vague and problematic since, theoretically nearly any statement or view beyond "particle X is at Y" type statements has a somewhat "unfair" bias reflecting the lens of the human experience, which has developed over millions of years of biology and thousands of years of culture.

Finally, seeing as the fact is that 99% of people would not be negatively affected by this feature remaining whatsoever, and the very slight negative impact on the other (intersex type) 1% or so is minimal at best, while the total impact of removing the feature is mildly annoying for many users, this seems a lot like irrational, hollow, virtue signalling.

<comment><USER7> A more charitable interpretation would be that classifying gender is hard. It is so hard that humans have trouble classifying gender purely with sight. If humans have so much trouble, how can we teach machines?

<comment><USER8> Classifying gender is easy. Humans do it correctly with near-perfect accuracy, typically failing only on edge cases. Furthermore, most cultures already bake in signaling of gender in various forms (Behavior, attire, etc).

Humans don't have much trouble, except against adversarial/outlier examples.

<comment><USER7> Can you provide some citations for what you've written?

<comment><USER8> First, please hold yourself to the same standard that you're holding me to. I see no citations to your (paraphrased) "identification of gender is exceedingly hard for humans". That goes heavily against most people's intuition and thus carries a higher burden of proof.

Now, 0.6% of Americans identify as transgender [[http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp- content/uploads/How...](http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp- content/uploads/How-Many-Adults-Identify-as-Transgender-in-the-United- States.pdf)]. That means using sex prediction alone, we can achieve a theoretical maximum of 99.4% accuracy here. This ignores the fact that transgenders often signal their gender via behavior or clothing, or attempt to obtain the physical characteristics of their assumed genders as well, both of which could further improve performance.

<comment><USER7> I asked for your help. Why did you see fit to get rude? What the hell is wrong with society that people like you think this is okay? Toxic responses like this ruin tech because instead of teaching you attack.

Loads of research suggests 7 year olds are about 70% accurate at predicting gender based off of pictures. It takes a couple of decades to get that into ranges you've cited. That doesn't sound easy. If it is, I'd love to read about it.

Why be toxic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, the responses to this thread are such an excellent marker for skin colour. I don't know the Google stats, but as far as labeling black women as male, Amazon and IBM get it wrong 30% of the time. Microsoft errs in 21% of test cases. As for Google's rates, not all that long ago they were labeling black people as gorillas so... [0]

Put it another way, how impressed would your boss be if you were to say "Yo, I've nailed this. I've got a kick ass algorithm, check this out. Oh, yeah, it fucks up 30% of the time."

Bias in AI is bad, but what makes it much much worse is arrogant attitudes claiming it doesn't exist.

And you know what, that speaks to the idiocy around AI more than anything. All these debates on AGI are moot, because people are already so keen to believe they got it all figured out it doesn't even matter if the actual tech is any good at all.

[0] [https://www.wired.com/story/photo-algorithms-id-white-men- fi...](https://www.wired.com/story/photo-algorithms-id-white-men-fineblack- women-not-so-much/)

<comment><USER10> > Wow, the responses to this thread are such an excellent marker for skin > colour.

As is pronouncing the effects of bias and prejudice. You can almost guarantee the person is white without using any AI.

I was or still am pretty critical of AI since the quantification of every property of people will probably not be very enjoyable for anyone. What changed my mind a bit is that there are people wanting to employ it to improve reality. That is far worse and I hadn't had that on my radar before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My google ads profile correctly identifies me as male: [https://adssettings.google.com/](https://adssettings.google.com/)

I imagine the high level business use cases for these machine learning APIs are similar. For example, analyze shopping mall camera footage to figure out demographics shopping there and coordinate the (socially accepted and segregated) men/women department stores accordingly.

This is such an profitable use case I cynically can't see why they would cripple their API like this, regardless of their ethical stance.

</comment><comment><USER12> That's just hilarious. We live in an era where the statistical differences between the appearance of men and women are better understood than ever before, thanks to artificial neural networks, and we can in fact pinpoint the exact combinations of low-level features that make a face look like a man or woman. And then you have people in such a deep denial of reality they pull off this type of joke. Sure, you cannot identify sex with absolute certainty only with a photo, but ignoring fringe cases you can guess with very high certainty.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's funny how ads can be targeted at men or women, but everything else is just "nooooo, we can't do that!".

I wish the adbuyers would flex that money muscle a bit and put google in line again.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if this is actually a marketing gimmick to invoke outrage and therefore clicks? The change certainly reduces the usefulness of the API by a fraction of a fraction of a percentage.

<comment><USER3> No, it's legitimate. Google is the last company that needs marketing gimmicks, let alone ones based on outrage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are we becoming more stupid?</comment>


Identifying Gender by Handwriting: You're Probably Not as Good as You Think - <AUTHOR> http://survata.com/blog/identifying-gender-by-handwriting-youre-probably-not-as-good-at-it-as-you-think/

<comment><USER2> > " _We were surprised that respondents weren't better at identifying the > gender behind the writings, and that so many were wrong on several of the > questions. The participants who submitted handwriting samples were blind to > the purpose of the survey, and the samples therefore weren't intentionally > misleading. Perhaps the average person simply isn't as good a judge as > expected._ "

Perhaps being spammed with a survey wall blocking the content that the user seeks, until they complete a survey (which is what survata does), causes many people to not try very hard. And perhaps the more technically sophisticated users who view survey walls as a signal for low quality, spammy content, simply hit the back button.

</comment><comment><USER3> The first and last female samples are identical (except for size, they appear to be exactly the same image). Hard to believe that one was identified correctly almost 80% of the time, and the other only 30%.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi - I'm a Survata co-founder. Thanks for catching that - it was an error we made in producing the chart, not a problem with the underlying study. The image has been updated. Sorry for the confusion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the test was given as a list, then I suspect a large number of the results are skewed just by the nature of people's desire to think in terms of pattern- breaking (e.g. Would the results be the same if it was the five male samples followed by the five female samples, or if only one sample was provided per person). Of course, talking about people's "nature" is itself conjecture and probably warrants it's own study.

</comment><comment><USER5> So, men always guess it's a man, and women always guess it's a woman?

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how a deep-belief network would perform at this, or even just an SVM.</comment>


joost on AppleTV - <AUTHOR> http://www.joostteam.com/2007/03/27/joost-successfully-run-on-apple-tv/ <comment><USER2> maybe I'm getting old, but I'm totally done with fighting against manufacturers to get their products to do the sort of things they should've done out of the box.</comment>


The Future of Journalism - How much was the Bible? - <AUTHOR> http://deepdive-masa.blogspot.com/2011/03/future-of-journalism-how-much-was-bible.html <comment><USER2> The idea behind the post was interesting at first. Unfortunately, I think you try to cover way too much. And in covering so much you fail to develop the connection between the two histories you discuss. Finally, to the end of the post is a jumble of semi-related ideas that are poorly connected.

I would suggest something like this to make it more readable: -Intro -History of Publishing -How ^ relates to history of journalism -History of journalism -How both histories shape the present state -Your ideas about the future

That seems pretty ambitious for a blog post though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm not still good at writing.

>That seems pretty ambitious for a blog post though.

Good point. Actually, that's exactly what I want to do here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > The interesting point was his invention led to religious transformation by > Luther and Calvin.

I know that's the generally accepted viewpoint, and maybe I learn towards it, but I still think its arguable, given the existence pre-Gutenberg of the Waldenses and the Carthari, Jan Hus and his followers, all of whom had reformation-style ideas.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my opinion for the future of journalism. Let's discuss.

</comment><comment><USER4> Uhm, where exactly do you place Bloomberg in your future?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Informative feedback. Thanks guys!</comment>


TyX: Serverless Back-End Framework in TypeScript for Lambda - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alitelabs/tyx <comment><USER2> It looks like the routing and server could well be rolled up into one FaaS on AWS Lambda. Apex Up does something similar for multiple languages and handles the API gateway config as well as custom URL SSL certs etc.

I used Apex Up for a while and it was fairly amazing for deployment. I stopped using it because the nature of my work changed.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Express is an established node.js web framework and there is a wealth of > third party middleware packages that may not be available in other form. The > ExpressService base class uses aws-serverless-express to host an Express > application. This is not intended to host existing Express applications but > more as a solution to bridge the gap for specific functionalities, for > example use Passport.js to implement user authentication.

Interesting, that's not something I've considered when building lambda functions in JS. Does this add to the cold start time? Probably, right?

I feel like, when using Lambda, the point is to be lean and not invoke a framework. Using the middleware makes sense, but why not add an adapter for the package you want to use?

I'm just spit-balling.

</comment><comment><USER4> At first glance TyX looks like a quite impressive and comprehensive toolkit. Are there other comparable frameworks that make a good starting point for understanding the completeness and functionality of this one?

</comment><comment><USER5> Why would you do a multi-route API inside a Lambda? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the Lambda itself?

<comment><USER6> It's not an awful way to do things, provided your app can run comfortably in a lambda. You get dev ergonomics (run locally like a traditional app), and you avoid cold-starts for infrequently-invoked endpoints.

You still get all the "serverless" benefits of FaaS, but don't need to architect absolutely everything around that paradigm. If in the future you want to move to running the thing on instances, you can do so pretty trivially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What about Google Cloud functions?</comment>


Interview with Paul Graham (from Techcrunch) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/02/an-interview-with-vc-paul-graham-of-ycombinator/ <comment><USER2> Marshall: What's the new startup you funded from the Kiko team?

Paul: I can't say yet, but it is certainly the most entertaining idea we've ever funded. In fact, insane might be a better word. But it's what they wanted to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Paul looks very happy in that photograph. I wonder why.

<comment><USER4> I think I was saying something improper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a pretty old interview, fyi.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great content never goes stale ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can so many people be wrong? - <AUTHOR>

Crowdsourcing, democracy, large conversations.  Thousands to millions of brains looking at a problem trying to figure out the answer.  And when they fail spectacularly, they fail spectacularly.<p>So I ask the HN crowd today, how can so many brains be wrong?  How can millions of brains seeing the same problem come up with the wrong answer?  If a million brains failed, would a billion or a trillion brains come up with the right answer? <comment><USER2> A few confounding issues: first, how do you define 'wrong'? Can you prove empirically that a better solution exists than the answer put fourth in any given example?

Secondly, if we _can_ prove that better solution that the crowd-sourced one exists, then can we prove that it would be more or less likely to be hit upon by an individual working alone or by the crowd? IE: what configuration provides the greatest likelihood of choosing the correct solution, and how do we quantify that?

Thirdly, it is very possible that for any given problem, there's not a 'correct' answer that can be attained reliably given the known data. One trillion people working together would be not more likely to predict the winning lottery numbers tomorrow for instance -the information they have available to them simply is not adequate.

My gut feeling? Group decision making is useful for certain, narrow reasons but doesn't become more powerful in a linear fashion when you add more people. There are inefficiencies of scale that come in to play which begin to outweigh the benefits of distributed decision making.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your premises are flawed. Human brain power is not an additive substance. So 1000 brains are in no sense of the term 1000 times more powerful than one brain.

Crowds don't actually have wisdom. All they really have is consensus.

As such, if a problem is the kind of thing that one person usually gets wrong, then it's also the kind of thing that the majority of a million-person crowd will also get wrong.

<comment><USER4> This. Each brain acts independently, and some brains have access to rather more or less data (and yes, processing power too) than others when it comes to making a decision on any given subjects. It's more of a surprise when the majority chooses _correctly_ given superficially-appealing conflicting arguments on esoteric subjects it doesn't really understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Such a good question! It illustrates how for ideas to flourish they need a platform and strategy to be organized and improved upon.

For example there's a great innovation tool called the Lotus Blossom Technique - you start with a concept, but then add layers of ideas or improvements to the original idea (like peeling a blossom) until you reach a core (and much improved) idea. The results of this are much more effective and targeted than traditional crowd-sourced problem solving - such as via forums - that can often involve lots of orthogonal voices shouting ideas yet lacking structure.

I love the Lotus Blossom as a creative thinking tool, yet can imagine on a larger scale it's an issue in itself to organize (e.g. who leads the process? how to make everyone feel 'heard'? how to keep the brainstorming on track so ideas are strengthened, not watered down?) So, when it all boils down, it's understanding and adapting to human psychology (at both an individual and collective level) that solves large-scale problems. This would be an awesome problem to solve!

</comment><comment><USER6> Truth isn't a binary, it's a gradient. There's both rational and emotional truth in many things we label wrong or unjust.

Meanwhile, we evolved to sift through information rapidly towards self- preservation. This has obvious drawbacks like any other broad algorithm would. Let's not get proud of whatever cohort we identify with; logical fallacies are the norm at any level of intelligence.

Many of our truths conflict with other societal and even personal truths. You can want children with a loving wife and still find pleasure in extramarital affairs. Both have sound biological and psychological rewards that carry paradoxically self-sabotaging complications.

Add to that cultural and technological shifts, disparities in wealth and power, the weakness of language, and many other complications which won't fit into the box I'm typing in.

Truth is complicated and dynamic enough as a philosophical concept, let alone with the innate irrationality we all share.

</comment><comment><USER7> One answer could be:

Given that success is a combination of problem, solution and another variables, the probability of someone finding the correct combination is very small. This is why the fly-or-die model startups like to choose is so cruel. Sometimes it looks like a startup is a lottery ticket and VCs are buying as many tickets as they can to secure the prize.

The probability of 1 zillion or just one person finding the right number is the same for each individual. What you could do is to become multiple tickets by pivoting or getting together with another individuals.

</comment><comment><USER8> Human cognitive illusions are powerful. It is by no means guaranteed that any number of human brains attempting to grapple with a problem will arrive at a correct answer. Democratic and scientific processes of sharing information and authority help a great deal, but one commonality all human beings have is fallibility, and crowd-sourcing more fallible brains doesn't eliminate that instrumental problem in truth-seeking.

(That said, I do appreciate the disagreement I often receive from other participants on HN as a reality check on my own thinking.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Can you give an example of this spectacular failure you are referring to?

</comment><comment><USER10> Your question assumes that humanity, at least in large quantities, is a rational actor. I think history shows us that's not true.

</comment><comment><USER11> of those brains, how many are actually analyzing the problem, vs just regurgitating information posed by someone else?

</comment><comment><USER12> We still are limited by all the information theory stuff.

Sometimes the point is not about the 'processing' power as much as it is about the fact that some problems need massive quantities of information to be solved, information wich might be simply unavailable, for example.

</comment><comment><USER13> Everyone is fallible. How do you know that you are not in regard to the failure of the masses?

</comment><comment><USER14> Groupthink can also be an issue as well within certain pockets of communities.

</comment><comment><USER15> There goes a great saying:

The IQ Of The Group Is The Lowest IQ Of A Member Of The Group Divided By The Number Of People In The Group.

</comment><comment><USER16> whats interesting is that swarms of bugs actually do become more intelligent collectively.

but I think it almost works inversely with people

</comment><comment><USER17> Crowd-anything is rare right...

</comment><comment><USER18> I am going to be honest here, and in doing so I will expect some downvotes because it goes against what the majority thinks is right and correct.

The majority is not always right or correct, they refuse to admit when they are wrong or when they are incorrect or have a flaw somewhere. Everyone is perfect, they think, there are no worries or problems to address, just write code and finish the projects and then you have an instant IPO worth billions. When your Dotcom has mostly yesmen and yeswomen (yespeople would be a better word to use) they cannot say 'no' to a bad idea and often when someone says 'no' they are fired.

Wait, Orion, these are good people, lots of talent and skills, studied at the best colleges, very popular and bright, all of them leaders, honor students, high IQs, the best of the best. How could any of them be wrong or incorrect on anything?

First to have a successful business you have to do research and analysis for the products and services your startup will provide and find out of any of them are feasible to work on. You have to find a problem that people need solved and solve it and then fill that need. You have to provide a good customer experience and have a good customer satisfaction and find the right market that allows opportunities for growth. You have to find 'turkey' projects that drain more expenses than they bring in with revenues and either fix them or get rid of them and develop new ones to replace them that can bring in more revenue.

Uh, we just work 80+ hours a week in a 'Hackathon' and create the best project with bleeding edge technology and the latest and greatest programming language and it will be an instant hit, right?

Nope, not if there is no market for it, not if it has tons of competition (like another Tetris or Suduko clone), not of you cannot find enough customers to find a need to use it or buy it, not if you cannot market the product enough to draw attention to it.

Well we had a great video game, original and clever about a Haunted House in the GO Language and raised money on Kickstarter and had some Crowdsourcing, but the project failed anyway.

Of course, there is a limited number of GO programmers out there, and the ones you had quit because the funding ran out before the project was finished. You needed more time, and more money to finish it. Sure you met your goal, but you didn't plan properly and budget properly to make sure the developers were well funded enough to finish the project even if it took twice as long as planned to finish. Now if you did it in C++ or Java first, and got a project out that brought revenue in, then you could have used that money to develop the GO version. Remember to use common languages first, and then use the money from those projects to develop on the less common languages.

Well we got a Dotcom and are selling advertising on it but we still cannot earn enough money despite having a large user base.

You are using a Dotcom Cookie Cutter business plan. Advertising is not enough for growth or even staying in business anymore. Many people use adblocker tech these days and very few click on advertising links for fear of a virus or phishing scam. Sure have free accounts, but also offer services free users won't have unless they are a subscriber. For example Youtube is having a $5/month subscription service come out for 25+ channels that have premium content after their advertising didn't work out.

Look there is other things too, sometimes people in the minority can see things the majority cannot. But in a startup Dotcom often people in the minority are kicked out or excluded. Don't let a silo mentality or a social kliq take over your corporate culture and community. You need a diverse bunch of people, not Pod People who are all alike. Don't exclude people aged 40 or above and only hire 20somethings, you need people with experience even people who failed and learned from it (Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple in 1985, learned from his failures started up Next and bought Pixar, and then came back to save Apple later learning from his past mistakes) or that can be a mentor. Don't exclude people who are mentally ill, they may have a creative imagination that your company needs for brainstorming and coming up with new ideas and innovations (Would you kick John Forbes Nash Jr. out because he is schizophrenic?) and don't demote someone when they turn mentally ill, accommodate and support them.

I myself have been excluded from my local startup community in St. Louis. I posted about it on another thread, I got invited by someone in that community who asked me to email him. I did email him, saying I want to help out, never got a response back. They had an event recently on Google+ that said to "Include Everyone" to solve the problems, but for some reason I am never included. They will say so publicly, but when it comes to doing it, well that is a different story.

You see I have two degrees one in computer science and one in business management. Most startups often overlook the business ends of things, and that is a major flaw and downfall.</comment>