Ask HN: Monetise a blog in 2016 - <AUTHOR> I have a minecraft Wordpress site that I bought on flippa a year ago that has 70k sessions a month and earns about $80 a month from Adsense.<p>How can I increase the revenue on this site in 2016? <comment><USER2> Check out my plugin [http://pleenq.com/](http://pleenq.com/) \-- for a minecraft blog, it might be neat to link images on your blog to where people can buy things like thoe J!NX replicas, t-shirts, etc.

Here's an example of the effect it creates: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GfKBvs53Ss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GfKBvs53Ss)

When users click through and buy something, you'd get a percentage of the sale. It could also be a lot more beneficial to users than just showing banner ads.

If you combine it with actually providing a benefit (i.e. a diamond block linking to the wiki page on diamond blocks), your users might very much appreciate the functionality.

<comment><USER3> It is still simply not working for me on chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If it was mine, I'd be offering Minecraft hosting and using that blog base as lead generation...

<comment><USER5> Or find a Minecraft host that has an affiliate program. Considerably less work than hosting yourself.

<comment><USER4> True, but generally affiliate programs are a one off commission at point of sale, where as the hosting is a reoccurring revenue that builds a business. Depends on what kind of time/effort your willing to put in, and if your trying to build a business or just some low effort income.

<comment><USER5> Your business in this case is the website. I've personally built affiliate- based infosites that yielded significant income off CPS (what you're calling a one-off commission here) for 3+ years, and that's nothing compared to the really successful examples of the genre - www.smartpassiveincome.com, for example, uses exactly this model and has generated $40k+ per month for a good half-decade or so.

It's a fairly standard model for monetising a website - essentially the next stage up from monetising via an RTB platform like Adwords, in that you put a bit more work in choosing and testing appropriate offers, but (should) end up with higher CPMs as a result.

Also, revshare is entirely possible with a lot of affiliate deals, and even if it's not offered "out of the box", it's possible to negotiate it if you want to. There are pros and cons to that approach - it's definitely not a straightforward "revshare is better" equation.

If the OP has expertise with system administration and Minecraft hosting, plus the copywriting, customer support and sales ability, starting a _second_ business in Minecraft hosting to monetise the site is also a valid potential option, but it'll eat a lot more time that OP may not have, and has its own failure modes that just running a leadgen business doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would normally say that niche blogs are better off having members-only features, but worried that your sessions might be kids.

If that's so, making sure you are very mobile-friendly and looking at app- install ad networks might be better than adsense.

</comment><comment><USER7> Reach out to minecraft servers to buy advertising.

BuySellAds.com

Minecraft hosting affiliate program. Bonus if they have a recurring cost per sale model</comment>


Ask HN: Are these real Googlers? Shot taken from TensorFlow video - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/mAo7PGl <comment><AUTHOR> Just watched the TensorFlow video which I really enjoyed, especially the product itself.

But are the people shown in the office real?

</comment><comment><USER2> Why wouldn't they be?</comment>


Upgrading FreeBSD 9.0 to 9.1 using freebsd-update - <AUTHOR> http://www.bsdguides.org/2012/upgrading-freebsd-9-0-to-9-1-using-freebsd-update/

<comment><USER2> I was upgrading my home system remotely and it didn't come back up after the second reboot. Unfortunately, it's the only host available remotely, and I won't be able to see why until later tonight when I have physical access.

I'm hoping its just something from ports which isn't happy. I wasn't prompted to rebuild, though (the first time I can remember that happening).

<comment><AUTHOR> I did this:

# freebsd-update fetch # freebsd-update install # reboot

# freebsd-update upgrade -r 9.1 # freebsd-update install # reboot

# freebsd-update install # reboot

remotely without any problems.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, after the second (in your case 3rd) reboot, I no longer have ssh access and not enough access to the rest of the network to tell why. I was able to successfully reboot into the 9.1 kernel after the first upgrade/install. It was only the second that didn't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great post, but you will also need to upgrade your ports collection. I personally use portsnap.

[http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/po...](http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports- using.html)

<comment><USER4> You don't actually have to unless you're moving from major version to major version (i.e. FreeBSD 8.x to 9.1 in this case), though it's never a bad idea to do so.

The FreeBSD ABI doesn't change with minor version releases so the majority of ports should work through all of the 9.x releases without needing to be upgraded. The big exception is ports that work closely or otherwise depend on kernel functions, those may changes and therefore those ports will need to be upgraded in order to keep working.</comment></comment>


What a Battery Researcher Told Us About Tesla Roadster Performance Claims - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/heres-what-a-battery-researcher-told-us-about-the-tesla-1820558723 <comment><USER2> Those numbers sounded crazy to me when I heard them, but I was pretty sure Musk wasn't lying either. I'm glad to have this explanation of how the few things we know contribute to the impressive results.</comment>


Googling for 'www' takes you to Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?q=www&btnI=745

<comment><USER2> If I go to google.com and run the query myself, I get Facebook as the first result but it doesn't actually go there.

For me, this query: <https://www.google.com/search?q=www>

Does a search for FB, does not load FB though.

<comment><USER3> The OP is using the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button to go directly to the first result. You can tell from the "&btnI=745" at the end of their link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here, in the NL, it takes me to www.hln.be. A news site that I until now had never heard of. Apparently it is so popular in Belgium that it bumps both Youtube (2nd) and Facebook (3rd) even in The Netherlands.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here in the UK you get bbc.co.uk and then facebook.com. A little sanity here.</comment>


Viinyl is About.me for music - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/02/25/viinyl-is-about-me-for-music/

<comment><USER2> Armine Saidi did an awesome job presenting this at Superconf. There was a live feed, but I'm not sure if they will repost the event. If they do check it out. He was the first presenter.</comment>


Microsoft Azure IP Advantage: Intellectual Property Protection - <AUTHOR> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/azure-ip-advantage/ <comment><USER2> I wish companies would ditch marketing for something more akin to software documentation: what's the spec? what are the inputs (money, or setup) and outputs (what I get) of your thing?

People shouldn't have to wade through so much prose to make a decision.</comment>


JQuery magicpreview plug-in - <AUTHOR> http://rikrikrik.com/jquery/magicpreview/

<comment><USER2> Plugin, plugin, huge word for some code that can be accomplished by this

using the plugin: $('form.example input:text').magicpreview('mp_');

without: $('form.example input:text').change(function() { $("mp_"+this).html(this.val()); });

or something like that =)

<comment><USER3> Hi, I'm the author of the plug-in, I actually hang around here quite often actually but I didn't realise my plug-in had been submitted until now.

The reason I made this plug-in was because I was doing what you were doing in your without-plugin example, but the form got more complex and suddenly the original code wasn't working as well. So I decided to make the plug-in to not only help me out but I figured that other people might be having the same problem too. However, if I was doing something quick and simple, I would do something akin to your without-plugin example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This plugin is vulnerable to XSS -- try entering  in the input field of the example.

<comment><USER3> You can use the options to set the output as text() rather than html(), e.g. $('div').magicpreview('mp_', { 'change': 'text' });

But yes, I should really add a flag to strip out any script elements :)

<comment><USER5> XSS detection is not just as simple as that. For example, in IE, entering the following produces a pop-up:

Hi

However, read debt's comment below. XSS is irrelevant here since "XSS" means cross-site scripting, i.e., ,managing to embed Javascript into pages someone ELSE sees. Only the client sees this, it doesn't get reproduced for anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome. I'm doing a redesign/rebuild right now and I was about to write this myself to create this effect for the Contact form (I first saw it on ALA years back in the discussion area).

</comment><comment><USER7> see also chain.js: <http://github.com/raid-ox/chain.js/wikis></comment>


Do No Evil? Google's Deceptive Practices Harm Consumers - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/ciocentral/2011/07/15/do-no-evil-googles-deceptive-practices-harm-consumers/ <comment><AUTHOR> This article is so utterly biased, that I hesitated to post it. However, I find it interesting how threatened the carriers feel by Google and after the GLAAD/AT&T debacle[1], I hope that this casts some more light on the shady lobbying practices of the big telcos:

 _From the Author's bio, Scott Cleland (<http://scottcleland.com/>):_

      "Chairman of www.NetCompetition.org, a pro-competition e-forum
      supported by broadband interests"

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/accused- of-a...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/accused-of-att- astroturfing-glaad-withdraws-support-for-t-mobile-buyout.ars)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I see a whole lot of accusation and wild language about things everybody knows, combined with gross misrepresentations about what Google actually says. I don't think they've ever once cast themselves as philanthropists rather than a business. They'll be the first ones to admit that their customers are advertisers, not users. However, their primary claim is that focussing on the user delivers a better product, and thus more users to advertisers. Everybody wins.

The tinhattery in this article was pretty hard to read. Hosting this kind of content isn't really doing much for the Forbes brand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is not a single example of "deceptive practices" in the article, merely supposed "evidence" that those practices are likely. Whether or not that is true, without any example to point to, the article is entirely evidence-free.

We have a word for that: it is _screed_. That's all this article really is. One of the worst OP's I've ever read on HN.

<comment><USER5> It's an interesting OP in the sense that it shows that some big players are trying to brew up trouble for Google using antitrust mechanisms. The screed itself is not very informative (it's an attack piece by a lawyer for the other side). Now, I would like to understand who "the other side" really is, and to get an evaluation of what they hope to gain and what their chances are. It doesn't seem that the other side is competing search engines, probably more like competing advertisers.

<comment><USER4> I have to admit, I don't find it very "interesting" at all. I find it irritating and sophomoric.

I'm very sympathetic to Google, but I do believe that they are entering dangerous territory as they become more and more dominant. So I would like to see a serious critique of their policies and practices.

This is not it.

<comment><USER5> I find it interesting not in the sense of "I thank them for sharing their wisdom with me", but in the sense of "look what's massing on the horizon".

And as for Google's policies in practices, as users of their consumer products, we're exposed to just one side of it. The money-making side of their business is advertising, and they tend to be less of a "nice guy" about _that_. Now, I have no idea how they compare with other advertising companies; whoever hired the "consultant" that wrote the OP is also playing hardball.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reads like a high school essay. In 1200 words the author manages to raise exactly one poorly backed point.

I've noticed lately the intensifying assault upon Google's citadel. I have some conservative acquaintances who lecture me about Google's evil ways - <USER2> how the company has attempted to destabilize the middle east to egregious violations of privacy. Not once have I heard them harp on Microsoft, or DRM, or Telcos. Frankly, I don't know where all this Google hate is coming from, but it must be an orchestrated effort by threatened industries.

We're already seeing a battle front in the mobile market, where no doubt spurious patents will be trumped up against Google. Anyone else care to chime in on developing fronts?

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow, an entire article talking about how terrible and corrupt Google is for biasing their search results, without a single example of Google biasing their search results.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm beginning to doubt journalistic integrity of Forbes. It seems to grant industry mouthpieces get a soapbox to harm technology companies.

Between the SpaceX/Loren Thompson fiasco and this I'm taking any article from them with a huge rock of salt.

<comment><USER3> It's _blogs_.forbes.com, so it's basically the huffpo model of journalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't get it. I was hoping to find references to solid "proofs" and examples on how Google is being deceptive. All I found was the statement that Google is deceptive and an entire blog post dedicated to why deceit is bad (as if people don't know).

</comment><comment><USER10> forbes.com, isn't that the site that sold dofollow-links via a well known paidlink-network for years?</comment>


Github activity stream - <AUTHOR> http://githubbub.com

<comment><USER2> This is great. But it would be nicer if the algorithm to randomly place the new messages would attempt to not obscure the most recent ones; sometimes I was trying to read a really interesting message and it got covered up before I finished reading.

</comment><comment><USER3> Gee, I never knew that gist was being used to spam live-tv stream blogspot links. I got my hopes up that someone had a script that would automagically connect me to the live baseball game of my choosing... ah well, what was I thinking.

Otherwise it's fun to watch, and a surprising amount are actually interesting/relevant.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I also hadn't realized that there was spam on github, but you notice it quite often here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> a bit more useful than the dashboard.

<comment><USER6> More entertaining than the dashboard by far, but I don't get much utility from either.

<comment><USER5> this one doesn't pretend to be useful

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Surprisingly entertaining -- thanks! It'd be nice if the the popup messages had a force field around them, so they stayed readable for as long as possible.

<comment><USER4> Glad you like it!

That's a good idea. It's definitely not using space very optimally as it is, though it's meant to feel like a busy "hubbub" / very active, so that's somewhat intentional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish commits were collapsed into one blob, there are times where 9-10 of the same face pop up with various commit logs. Slightly annoying.

</comment><comment><USER9> What is it based on? Global activity? I am seeing 99% "Eclipse Platform project repository".

<comment><USER4> haha yeah I just saw that as well — apparently eclipse just uploaded several years' worth of tags.

it's a very simple wrapper around the github events api: <https://api.github.com/events> (or in the code at [https://github.com/hrldcpr/githubbub/blob/master/githubbub.j...](https://github.com/hrldcpr/githubbub/blob/master/githubbub.js#L49))

in particular, it shows the main event types that have substantial text content in them, so mostly commits and comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It does not work in Opera.

</comment><comment><USER11> I prefer gitlive.com

<comment><USER8> I'd like it more if it had a backlog. Putting that widget on any website is difficult because the likelihood that someone will be there long enough for a commit is fairly low.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you use your dual screen setup? - <AUTHOR> I currently have a dual screen setup at home.  A larger 4K monitor and a smaller 2560.  I have the 4K directly in front of me and the other as the secondary monitor to the side.
I do most of my work on the 4K monitor, but when coding, I usually put the IDE on the secondary monitor and then have the shell, web console, and web browser with the app running on the 4K screen.
Having looked around offices in the past, this seems to be in the minority.
How do you use your dual monitors?
Does anyone use their bigger screen as the secondary?  The reason I ask is because I want to convert to a sit/stand setup, but to do so I'd have to put the smaller monitor on the riser stand, because only the larger one can connect to the monitor arm.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I have the reverse setup and use the 4k side monitor to run 4 windowed apps and any temp windows I need.

I use a 1920 in front of me as my primary monitor/ide

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have issues or complaints about that setup? Would you do it the other way if you could?

<comment><USER2> I could switch it if I wanted to, but for me, I feel like the slightly smaller 1920 is just the right size and resolution for me to concentrate on.

If I had any complaint, it would be that I might prefer it if my primary monitor was able to rotate 90 degrees into portrait mode. I know some can, but the ones I have do not.

My side (right hand) 4k is about the right size and resolution for 4 tiled 1024 windows that I keep open all the time.

Email, Slack, Git Client, Web Browser.

Any additional windows I open I then to slide off to the side monitor as well. This keeps my primary monitor mostly reserved for my IDE.

For what it is worth, I have a second workstation counter clockwise to my left with a mirrored config to my primary workstation. My office is like a kind of mini-command center. My chair is basically in the center of an octagon shaped room. My desk rests against 5 of the sides of the octagon.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds like a sweet setup. Thanks for the input!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


3D engine made of MS Excel formulae - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/CBel/20180208/308549/3D_engine_entirely_made_of_MS_Excel_formulae__Enjoy_this_Doomxls_file_.php <comment><USER2> As an excel developer in the 90's, this brings up great memories. I wrote the Doom Excel credits in Office 95. I wish I'd had thought of doing this instead. Kudos.

<comment><USER3> My brain is desperately attempting to recall the sequence of steps to open it. Ctrl + Shift, clicking something in the Help -> About... dialog box, then F5 or something? And/or there was a star-wars scroller in one of other apps, right?

<comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb9AXBowb0E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb9AXBowb0E)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Spreadsheets in general and Excel in particular are magic. It is very likely that spreadsheets were the killer application that drove the demand for PC's by businesses.

Spreadsheets are truly the programming tool of the masses (who don't even necessarily think they are programming).

</comment><comment><USER6> Since Excel is a pure functional programming paradigm, I suppose this will make FP people happy to see FP taken so far without mixing in any imperative constructs. It's the Übermensch of functional 3d engines.

<comment><USER7> calling this a functional 3d engine is a stretch, but sure grats functional programming, you have entered the 80s

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just watched a talk this morning about doing high dynamic range photography in Excel ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkQJdaGGVM8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkQJdaGGVM8)). Looks like now I've got something to watch tomorrow!

<comment><USER9> that is great, both of these reminded me of deepexcel: multi-layer neural networks implemented with a spreadsheet!:

[http://www.deepexcel.net/](http://www.deepexcel.net/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really like how the only VBA macros are for catching key inputs so you don't have to manually update your location cell.

Most "look what this crazy person built in excel!" things end up really having VBA do all the work.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's very neat. Another nice example of the power of excel and spreadsheets in general is the fast.ai course, almost all of the basics are covered in spreadsheets.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is crazy. I'm pretty floored that someone did something like this.

Then again, we've all seen (or worse, have been roped into trying to convert!) some of the crazy Excel monstrosities some manager wrote that runs an entire company or such!

Prior to seeing this, I had found (somewhere - dunno if it still exists out there) a "tutorial" on how a neural network works - and the whole thing was done as an Excel worksheet. I thought that was pretty insane at the time...

</comment><comment><USER13> As a less extreme example, an implementation of the AES cipher in Excel formulas (no macros): [https://www.nayuki.io/page/aes-cipher-internals-in- excel](https://www.nayuki.io/page/aes-cipher-internals-in-excel)

<comment><USER14> That reminds me of when my mother-in-law asked me if you could compute IBAN check digits in Excel. The suggestion by IT had been to cut-and-paste customer data into a random "compute IBAN check digit" website, one customer at a time, because they couldn't be arsed to update the database automatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've always thought a data-centered programming language that compiles to an Excel spreadsheet would be a Fun Challenge™ and possibly even useful. Spreadsheets are an amazing tool. This is an amazing demonstration.

</comment><comment><USER16> Kinda Similar: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8)

</comment><comment><USER17> Could be rewrited for LibreOffice Calc?

<comment><USER18> It renders in LibreOffice - although I wasn't able to get the movement to work, even after enabling macros.

<comment><USER19> Try logging a bug, I know it might seem ridiculous but it may help with efforts to improve VBA compatibility.

<comment><USER18> Sadly LibreOffice ignores user bug reports.

<comment><USER19> Hardly. Why do you say that? I have personally worked on bugs reported by end users.

<comment><USER18> That's been my experience. Bugs reported and then either ignored or closed as duplicates of ancient bugs.

See [https://tommorris.org/posts/9491](https://tommorris.org/posts/9491) (not my post, but similar experience).

<comment><USER20> Half of the problems listed are about how the app doesn't provide macOS- specific integrations. The rest are very minor usability issues that might have valid justifications for being that way. I am not inclined to view these as being terribly legitimate complaints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That reminds me of people doing 3-D engines in MegaZeux.

[http://vault.digitalmzx.net/screens2/cde248323538306a9712eb9...](http://vault.digitalmzx.net/screens2/cde248323538306a9712eb9c1d06ed6667293c9d446ae477af0236a2e35c9bb5)

MegaZeux is a ZZT successor.

[https://image.dosgamesarchive.com/screenshots/zzt4.gif](https://image.dosgamesarchive.com/screenshots/zzt4.gif)

And uses ASCII characters. MegaZeux up'd the ante and allowed you to edit the VGA text glyphs so you could make "sprites."

Back-in-the-day Megazeux and ZZT were like their own dedicated systems, like software console systems. It was really fun to see what people did with incredibly constrained systems.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you agree on these screening shortcuts when hiring tech developers? - <AUTHOR>

I came across this interesting video (youtube.com/watch?v=SK27TqxV4ko&t=26m49s), where some screening tips are mentioned (imgur.com/BPijK9w).
One of them says that a good developer always uses either OS X or Linux and using Windows is a no-no. Another one says the preferable primary scripting language should be Ruby or Python.
What do you think about these so called hiring heuristics? Will ditching a Windows laptop for a MacBook and being proficient in either Ruby or Python give you a career boost in the long run? <comment><USER2> Ditching your Windows or learning Ruby and/or Python shouldn't give your career a boost in the long run, unless you're developing for iOS/OSX/Linux or in Ruby and/or Python.

If a company is going to not continue with an interview because you use Windows, they might not be a company you want to work with (if you really like Windows, which I do). I'm actually quite surprised to see somebody who is so bold as to say a Windows user is a non-starter. I think this is very small minded, particularly as most end users are likely on a Windows PC, even if they have an iOS or Android mobile or tablet device. Developing for linux servers is a bit nicer on OSX, but if you're more comfortable on Windows, and can make it work for you, than that shouldn't be an issue.

As far as scripting languages go, I've got a bit of experience with Ruby and Python, as well as PHP, but I'd say my go to language of choice is Javascript. Java is still a hugely popular language, and there are so many others.

Basically, I think this presenter is trying to give 'start-up founders with little technical knowledge' the ability to screen technical people, but I think that is really difficult to do without knowing what type of technical position the person is hiring for. He also likely has some geographic bias. I live in Sydney Australia, where Rails devs seem quite rare, while Java and PHP still seem to be in vogue. When I was in North America, Ruby on Rails was the big thing.

I'd take a look at where you're at right now, what you want to be doing, and plan from there. I think you can mostly ignore this guy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I share your viewpoint that the video was made for 'start-up founders with little technical knowledge' but most of the tips that were presented seem credible.

Myself, I am going to be graduating soon with a BSc and I yet have to do some of things that were mentioned. Such as using a version control and setting up a personal website (something I have being putting off for a long time). My first OS was Win 98 and my languages would be Python, Java, PHP, CSS/HTML. I am not entirely sure how I would stack up against other developers, and it bothers me how some recruiters would use shortcuts like these to simply not consider you at all.

<comment><USER3> Don't worry about it. Heuristically, The sort of places that apply these sorts of heuristics are almost certainly the sort of places you don't want to work for.

<comment><USER2> Though I agree with you in principal, the problem is that people who don't know what they are talking about are being taught to use these heuristics to judge developers. I can't help them if they are taught to weed me out because I don't match what some stuck-up 'founder' has taught them at a General Assembly class and which is promoted via Google Entrepreneur series.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Terrible advice. It will be good fodder for illustrating how not to think in some future presentation.

When someone is hiring a developer, they're going to hire for the job. Those sieves might be useful when hiring for the current set of fads, but if I need someone to, say, write for an Azure deployed C#/SQLServer application, the brogrammer toting a Mac or telling me about his Linux skill isn't going to get any attention. If I need an embedded firmware developer, I probably won't much care about full stack or Ruby skills. Game programmer? A totally different set of skills.

So the whole idea that "the only good programmers are those that fit in my box" or "there's no way a Windows programmer could be any good" and the rest of his rubbish, to me as a hiring manager, scream "doesn't know shit about hiring people or building teams outside the tiny, incestuous world he's crawling in".

</comment><comment><USER5> He is setting himself up for a "Mark Russinovich walks into a bar" kind of joke...

</comment><comment><USER6> Well that video is something...

If you want to take HR advice from a 28 year old... who's only hired a handful of people in his short career. Good luck!

Most corporate developers use C or C++, and yes C# and never truck code to Git. I'd never use Git for my code repository, there are much more stable products out there that have better security.

As for not using windows? Hmm... I 2 iterations of windows and ubuntu on my laptop and can boot in any of them depending on what I'm doing. 75% of the world uses Windows and if you're not working in the end users environment then how are you developing?

He left out reddit, even heavily edited its a good source of info.

Ruby is dying and python is taught in every decent CS program. PHP, js and even asp are very good depending on what is being done.

I would steer clear of any "employer" using these type of "heuristics" for hiring. A good employer knows that the tools don't make a craftsman... I don't care if a guy's never seen the inside of a git fork... I'd rather have him know how gc works in java on windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that insight. (I read your post about hiring the truck driver. I dont think many recruiters would do such a thing but I admire your decision at that time.)

<comment><USER6> Well. I've been a CTO of a company that had 1200 employees and 80 of them were mine. I probably hired more developers in one year than that guy has in his life.

I really never gave a shit or two about what OS my developer had on his laptop. Since he probably had what worked for him in his personal space.

I had development groups with project managers they called the shots with the producers and stakeholders on what tools were to be used in the project. If we were working on a webservice that interfaced with a product that was on a Windows server... Then most likely windows knowledge was a +.

In my opinion, most good developers know their way around several OSs and languages. They are just tools so they have an understanding of the tools they need for the job.

I personally don't know that many programmers that work in OS X. Linux on the desktop/lap is fairly new, so if a guy has a windows box at home. It wouldn't bother me one bit.

This cat is full of himself and his puny company. There's a 100 guys on here with better advice.

<comment><USER6> __* FULL DISCLOSURE __* The "Truck Driver" was also a harvey mudd grad school dropout, who had a serious aptitude for math. He wasn't Bubba with a pocket donut... He was trying to make ends meet at the time and I gave him a chance.

<comment><USER4> On of the best Lisp programmer I ever picked up was a musician, who wasn't getting enough gigs. Had an advanced degree in Math from Carnegie Mellon, so I said "see if you can wrap your head around this and let's talk". Rest is history.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Insider Trading, or Political Persecution? - <AUTHOR> http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/insider-trading-or-political-persecution/ <comment><USER2> I'm going with "insider trading" _and_ "political persecution".

<comment><USER3> agreed. Very little insider trading gets punished. When it does, there is almost always a political angle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would be playing up this angle as well, it holds much promise.

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't that why insider trading laws exist?

<comment><USER2> No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Bush Administration never ceases to amaze me...</comment>


A Unified Mathematical Language for Physics and Engineering (1996) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~clifford/publications/ps/dll_millen.pdf <comment><USER2> For those interested in the history, I highly recommend Crowe's book _A History of Vector Analysis_. It's written a bit from the perspective of the dominant "modern" system of vectors from Gibbs/Heaviside, so it probably somewhat undersells the significance/usefulness of both Hamilton's quaternions and Grassmann's vectors (or what Hestenes calls "geometric algebra"), but the historical and biographical details are fascinating.

Also recommended is all of Hestenes's work (e.g. _A New Foundation for Classical Mechanics_ , his Oersted Medal lecture, various papers), as well as the book _Geometric Algebra for Computer Science_ by Dorst, Fontijne, & Mann. The latter is a bit light on the mathematical formalities but gives a good introduction that could get someone started using geometric algebra in practice in e.g. robotics, computer graphics, etc.

<comment><USER3> Dorst, Fontijne, & Mann is the best pedagogical introduction to geometric algebra that I have seen. I spent a couple years very excited about the ideas in Hestenes' papers, and Doran and Lasenby's book, but unable to actually calculate anything. Dorst, Fontijne, & Mann have very good exercises, and build up the general framework slowly and clearly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I took a graduate class in General Relativity under Robert Brandenberger, one of the more unconventional (and brilliant) approaches he took with his students was to introduce the formalism of geometric algebra quite early on, along with tetrads and spinors. While confusing at first, it proved to be extremely enlightening when Maxwell's equations were brought into play.

<comment><USER5> Were Maxwell's equations still condensed to 4 equations (Heaviside's equations in Gibb's vector notation), or something less concise, as I believe they were with quanternions?

<comment><USER6> I believe they become Maxwell's Equation, and it's super simple.

<comment><USER7> Expressing Maxwell's equations using the six-component electromagnetic tensor F, they become

      dF  = μJ
      d*F = 0

where μ is the magnetic permeability of the vacuum and J is the electromagnetic 4-current. The operator 'd' is the differential operator from exterior algebra, and the '*' is the Hodge dual.

Using the bivector field F = E + iB from geometric algebra, they become

      DF = μJ

where μ and J are as before, and D is the covector derivative.

For comparison, using the traditional Gibbs/Heaviside notation Maxwell's equations are

      ∇ . E = ρ/ε
      ∇ . B = 0
      ∇ x E = -∂B/∂t
      ∇ x B = μ(J + ε ∂E/∂t)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I studied several of Hestenes' papers around ten years ago. Most of them are computational in nature and do not proceed to do geometry in an axiomatic way. This isn't to say he didn't write such a paper but I never found one and I read nearly all his extent papers. The thing I liked most was his derivation of the Kerr metric for a rotating black hole. I couldn't find anything wrong with it and I could actual understand every step, unlike Kerr's original paper. Other than that GA has done absolutely nothing to help gain a better understanding of QFT, GR, string theory, Lie groups etc. (for that an in depth understanding of differential forms is best. Physicists, even mathematicians who truly understand the magic of differential forms are even more rare than programmers with a deep understanding javascript!!!) IMO Geometric algebra is a useful collection of interesting computation tools. It reminds me of Pedrag Cvitanovic's "bird track" diagrams to calculate representations of Lie algebras. Nothing unique or fundamental is gained but it is remarkable that a completely orthogonal viewpoint to some very traditional topics exist. Other examples (from mathematics) of surprisingly novel viewpoints of traditional topics include Kuratowski who has a very unique approach to general topology and F. Riesz came up with the notion of "nearness" which simplifies difficult theorems in functional analysis but it could be used to recreate all of basic mathematical analysis.

<comment><USER9> It seems like the point isn't to gain anything unique or fundamental in physics or mathematics directly, but rather that, since it has the potential to unify the language used across a number of fields in mathematics and physics, that the adoption of a common language could eventually lead to significant progress. So (if it is in fact an effective unifier), it is something unique and fundamental in the realm of tools—though not within the fields the tools would be applied to. Or do you not think it would be an effective unifier (in the sense of communication) after all?

<comment><USER8> From experience I would have to say 'differential forms' seem to fit the bill for a unifying mathematical language as applied to geometry and physics. GA seems to me as more of a computation tool. Differential forms are pretty standard in many maths and physics texts. Many paper on the preprint Arxiv use differential forms. The only thing about DFs is that they are very efficient for communicating ideas and doing proofs. For practical calculations they don't really simplify anything (actually get in the way) but it's easy to transform them into the usual vector tensor notation. GA seems less flexible in this regard, you take the product it uses and you either like or lump it.

<comment><USER3> There's a bit of discussion of how differential forms fit into the geometric calculus framework in [1], which is probably the most concise and readable introduction to the geometric calculus approach to differential geometry. All the machinery of forms is available as part of geometric calculus.

Geometric algebra/calculus has a more direct way to deal with metrical information using the dot product. Forms only use the wedge product: in problems where the dot product would be useful, forms simulate it by applying the hodge dual twice, which is a less intuitive and less direct way to get the job done.

[1] The Shape of Differential Geometry in Geometric Calculus, see section 19.4 for the bit about forms [http://geocalc.clas.asu.edu/pdf/Shape%20in%20GC-2012.pdf](http://geocalc.clas.asu.edu/pdf/Shape%20in%20GC-2012.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This 1996 paper is an introduction to Geometric Algebra, which is in effect a coordinate system where some manipulations are greatly simplified.

</comment><comment><USER11> My resident core-stability expert (who might now have to learn about GA) alerted me to this thread. Can't say how happy I am that people are looking at it -- am happy even with the useful criticisms (have just emailed the link to the other Lasenbys, Doran, Dorst, Hestenes). Another similar semi-popular IEEE article (without equations) will appear soon.

<comment><USER12> I really enjoyed reading it but I got stuck on the equation at the bottom of page 2. Why is the condition satisfied equal to -1? Why not 1 or 0?

Thanks :-)

<comment><USER13> The equation is a definition; the letters i, j and k do not represent variables :)

Edit: If you want a more detailed explanation, the Wikipedia entry on Quaternions might be helpful (specifically the multiplication table at the top).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Grassmann/Exterior Algebra is really neat. It also gives a natural deduction of a lot of basic multidimensional calculus concepts and has a nice lead-in to differential geometry.

<comment><USER8> Gauss-Bonet all the way! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The survey of historical background here is nicely done. Accessible and quite concise given the amount of material it surveys, but with substance.

</comment><comment><USER16> I remember being exposed to Geometric Algebra by Geomerics who were bragging of their new approach to global illumination when they were still a relatively new company.

Their demos were quite impressive and they sparked a lot of interest in GA in the graphics programming community.

EDIT: actually, I just realized that the founder of Geomerics ( Chris Doran ) is quoted as one of authors in this paper.

</comment><comment><USER17> For those who want to learn geometric algebra I strongly recommend Linear And Geometric Algebra by Macdonald. I taught myself this subject entirely from this book (making sure I did all the exercises) and even enjoyed the process! Slightly weirdly an application of the algebra became useful at work shortly after finishing the book.

</comment><comment><USER18> At the bottom of page 15 they have a reference from 1999 -- after the publication of this paper!

</comment><comment><USER19> The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many from which to choose!

Edit: With regard for dang's call for substantive comments (are koans not substantive?):

In physics, we emerged from a forest of units to a standardization on CGS units, then we changed gears to SI. CGS remains no less elegant than the day it was invented; electrodynamics is beautiful when viewed through the lens of CGS.

Languages are tools, we shouldn't expect one of them to suit all situations.

<comment><USER20> Changing conventions for units and moving toward standardizing across all scientific fields to the SI units (meters, etc.) is useful, but this article isn't about changing units. This idea of a new set of abstractions for representation and exploration of physics is a much much more powerful idea.

When I first learned special relativity, I remember struggling with my intuition and having to rely on unfamiliar formula to find the answer to even simple problems. The farther one goes in physics the more one has to trust the equations (electo-magnetics, special and general relativity, quantum physics, etc.) and the math itself starts to obscure whats happening. Having simpler representations and more powerful abstracts is an exciting possibility. I saw this again when trying to solve some simply stated problems (e.g. a particle falling off of a frictionless sphere), mathematics like Lagrangians which I didn't know when I first attempted this problem make the solution so much easier.

As an analogy for those that aren't really interested in the mathematics, these ideas are a bit like the jump from algebra and infinite series math to integral calculus. Although, in theory, one could solve many problems of physics without calculus (see for example [1]), the use of calculus immediately opens up a better understanding and the ability to describe and solve more realistic problems (like cars that don't travel at a constant speed).

[1] "Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun" by David Goodstein

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Please.. Do the same for machine learning and statistics...

<comment><USER14> What do you feel is the division between them? I feel like probability is pretty close to the "unified language of ml and stat"</comment></comment>


2008 AWS Start-Up Challenge Videos - <AUTHOR> http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/amazon_startupchallenge_2008.jsp

<comment><AUTHOR> Is anyone else surprised at the high production quality? I hope YC doesn't expect something like this-- if so, I many need to upgrade my 5 year old Casio digital camera!</comment>


Google comes up with new emoji to better represent working women - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidcentral.com/google-comes-new-emoji-better-represent-working-women <comment><USER2> Nice. Are there more important issues? Sure there are. But then again there are more important issues than Unicode emoji in general.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just a few years ago nobody would have even thought about that those unicode symbols might have some kind of gender.</comment>


What Jimmy Fallon...Yes Jimmy Fallon... Can teach Newspapers - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/03/what-jimmy-fallon-can-teach-newspapers/comment-page-1/#comment-9157

<comment><AUTHOR> Bringing back 'live commercials'... The way to beat Tivo.</comment>


Turn It Off: NSA's Achilles' Heel - <AUTHOR> http://offnow.org/plan/ <comment><USER2> Several key pieces of information on Off Now.

-Off Now represents an unprecedented collaboration between left and right wing organizations. The 10th Amendment Center is associated with right wing causes like nullifying Obamacare or gun control regulations. The Bill of Rights Defense Committee is well known as left leaning civil rights organization. This partnership has been characterized by mutual respect and a shared love of liberty. It is amazing.

\- The Off Now legislation has real legal consequences in the opinion of experienced constitutional lawyers like Shahid Buttar of BORDC. In California, the Off Now Bill SB828 would prevent the NSA from recruiting on UC campuses and impair opening an NSA facility in the future in CA. In Washington State, it would impair the functionality of the Yakima facility considerably.

What can you do?

\- If you live in Washington State, call the office of Laurie Jenkin's and ask for hearing on HB2272 [http://www.leg.wa.gov/House/Representatives/Pages/jinkins.as...](http://www.leg.wa.gov/House/Representatives/Pages/jinkins.aspx)

\- Ask your employers to participate in the The Day We Fight Back on Feb 11th. [https://thedaywefightback.org/](https://thedaywefightback.org/)

\- In SF, come to the AT&T building at 611 Folsom on the 11th to hear whistle blower Mark Klein speak and to remind the SF community that the NSA is capturing America's internet traffic right in their city.

\- If you live in CA, sign Shame on Feinstein. [https://shameonfeinstein.org](https://shameonfeinstein.org)

\- Support the BORDC and the 10th Amendment center financially.

<comment><USER3> It might be worth researching Yakima a little further - its been planned for closure since 2012 [1].

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakima_Training_Center#Ancillar...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakima_Training_Center#Ancillary_functions)

<comment><USER4> Still worth closing. If any states pull this off, they'll be pressed for facilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Won't anybody 'attacking' the NSA will be labelled a terrorist, and anybody signing a petition simply add their own name to the list?

If any kind of action like this is taken against the NSA on US soil, I'm sure it will result in increased legal protective measures for the NSA to help safeguard from this new 'terrorist threat', which will only make people want to disrupt them more.

Basically what I fear is a home-grown 'terrorist' movement that the NSA will use to justify its recent behaviour. This works so well in their favour (long- term) that I can't even rule out the possibility of the whole thing being a false flag actually endorsed by the NSA. This can't end well…

<comment><USER6> So, you're saying that organized political action to affect democratic change in America could be considered a "terrorist" threat? The fact that you're even worried about this shows how far our country has slid in terms of liberty and democracy. We are now on the cusp of being a police state, but I really hope people won't let that dissuade them from exercising their civic duty to engage the democratic process.

<comment><USER7> > _organized political action_ //

The action is a physical with-holding of resources in order to prevent an arm of government from operating. That doesn't sound like "political" action. Warranted or not that description vastly underplays the gravity of the proposed action IMO.

<comment><USER8> Of course it is political action! It happens all the time, for private developments (eg casinos) as well as government developments (eg, local governments enacting laws to make putting sewage treatment plants or nuclear waste treatment plants in their areas)

It is effective because it adds friction. Things seldom change from one action, but lots of things add up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's easy to yell from the sidelines, but what is this hoping to accomplish? A total shutdown of the NSA?

I wonder how realistic this goal is. Forcing states to pass legislature to ban offering help in any way to the NSA? Million dollar contracts down the drain, because a local government official turns off the water tap, turning data centers into ghost towns? Seems like a very long shot.

Secondly I wonder how the pro's and con's weigh up. I think even the staunchest supporters of (internet) freedom would, at least to some extend, agree that intelligence gathering and spying is a current necessity for a world power like America. It would probably put their entire military in danger for intelligence efforts to drop to zero.

That "the people" in general want things to change is clear and efforts to create such change are mostly noble. I think a balance can be found where the NSA acts within bounds, with oversight and transparency. Where companies can disclose the numbers on information requests. None of these secret court shenanigans anymore. Versus an NSA that does what it is made to do, does its job well (hiring proud academics included), and generally works in the interest of all American people (and their allies). There should be a balance between boundless spying and no spying at all.

<comment><USER10> >It's easy to yell from the sidelines, but what is this hoping to accomplish? A total shutdown of the NSA?

I doubt anyone thinks that, realistically. From what I gather this is essentially protesting, although a protest that actually causes those in power some discomfort. The NSA would have to start sourcing/generating it's own power and water. Anyone who works there will become persona-non-grata. In my opinion, this actually has the chance of doing something. Much better than 500,000 people marching down Broadway, then going home at the end of the day (Iraq war protest, anyone?).

And I don't think anyone wants to see the NSA go away completely either. I believe that if the Snowden documents revealed that everything the NSA was doing was outside the nations borders (or just not targeted at US citizens), no one would give two shits. They would even be pleasantly surprised, probably. But that's not what we found out. We found out that the NSA and it's secret court take the most liberal reading of the laws in place to do whatever they want, and with no good controls over who has access to what information, or when.

In short, this is a different form of protest, hopefully a more effective one.

<comment><USER11> This. Furthermore, it shows employees of the NSA that many American citizens consider their current M.O. unconstitutional and therefore unpatriotic. At the end of the day the NSA is made up of Americans and it's important to remind those in this ivory tower that America values freedom and liberty over any security measures that will come at the cost of freedom and liberty.

When a state bars the NSA from doing business within its borders, its sending a message to all NSA employees that the NSA currently does not represent the vision for America it believes in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a load of naysayers. Sending the message that pervasive domestic surveillance is unwelcome could be effectively sent with a couple critical states cutting off local resources and enacting laws that are hostile to the operators of such a facility. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's a form of protest.

</comment><comment><USER13> This sounds great. Even has a slight geurilla ring to it, that appeals to the freedom-fighter in all of us.

But, as many have noted on this thread, they will simply find ways around these obstacles. So, it's just another form of cat-and-mouse in a game we are destined to lose, as their resources are virtually unbounded.

In all, it really goes the long way around getting done what really needs to be done: change and clarify laws which bring the NSA back under heel.

IMO, pursuing anything else outside of legal redress as a primary goal (including pure technical solutions like encryption) is simply assuming the wrong posture. It concedes their right to do these things, as long as they can skirt the chestnuts we try to shovel into their path. In this, we allow ourselves to be put at odds with our own government and abandon the rule of law, as well as the very principle that our government works for us.

<comment><USER7> Agreed.

It's an attempt to circumvent democratic process. That may be deemed necessary but then isn't there a larger issue - that you have a pseudo-democracy in which the only way for the populus to combat rogue agencies within the state government is to perpetrate acts of aggression against their own infrastructure? The infrastructure those same people are paying taxes to implement?

Basically you're saying that USA democracy has broken to such an extent that the people need to initiate war - of a form - against the government's agencies.

<comment><USER14> > It's an attempt to circumvent democratic process.

How is passing a state law circumventing democratic process? Isn't it more of a circumvention if all of the locals vote against the NSA, but the NSA still moves in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> All the federal government would have to do is threaten to cut all federal funding and subsidies to the state. An example would be funding for interstates, but there are many many more. I can't remember when exactly, but I'm pretty sure they've played this card before.

I can't think of a single state whose politicians would not back down from such a threat.

<comment><USER16> They used the interstate funding threat to get all 50 states to toe the line on 21 year drinking age.

<comment><USER12> And yet some states are still managing to hold out against Obamacare.

<comment><USER16> In this particular case "they" equals congress, not the administration. Obama is not legally able to hold highway funding hostage to get states to implement his doomed healthcare act; He could direct congress to do the above, but they are generally too busy discussing the repeal of the ACA these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "The water-cooled supercomputers require 1.7 million gallons of water per day to function."

Anyone have a citation for that? I suspect that water is in circulation. I doubt they send almost two million gallons into the sewage system everyday.

<comment><USER18> I did a quick calculation for the energy consumption of Tianhe-2, which has a power consumption of 17808 kW ...

1,538,611,200,000 J per day. Of course the Tianhe-2 is rated as the fastest, and the NSA won't be using something as big, but it gives you a rough idea of the power consumption of these machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you cut the power to NSA facilities they will just install local generation, even trucking in their own fuel. Not sure about water and such but I'm sure they could do the same there.

<comment><USER20> It's a move in a large game of chess. Just because your opponent will counter your movement, doesn't mean you shouldn't make a move. This is a viable strategy. The earlier it is, the more likely you have resources to counter a movement. This is an option now and with sound strategy could be used in various scenarios.

The NSA is successful now because of computational power and obscurity. They operate in the dark and as a result get away with a lot. But operational funds that feed their workers that work for them on all levels come from the people. Bureaucracy is acting as levels of abstraction preventing the people from shutting them down by denial of resources. The further you are able to cut down the bureaucracy and make it apparent that the NSA needs money from the people to operate, the more likely you are to engage the american people into saying 'no'.

So, should they need to spend money on energy, they will have to find a means to get it, and the more you block them, the higher the price gets. At some point, if the campaign is successful, they will have to appeal to the people for money, i.e. some tax to do it. Maybe it will be defense spending, or maybe it will be energy tax. But the clearer it becomes an issue of money, the more obvious what the move is, and can thus be countered into a game finishing move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I thought it was "Turn off the computer" and write on paper, and talk to people, in person, etc.

<comment><USER22> don't be ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think this plan is very naive. There will always be money for more police and military stuff. North Korea is extreme example. Result of those obstructions would be mostly prosecution of activists.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes, let's fund the NSA through taxes and then pay more by sabotaging them.

Here's an equally brash idea...

Innovators in the USA threaten to become primary residents elsewhere. Let other countries bid on the incentives they'd like to enact to bring thousands of startups and leading innovators.

</comment><comment><USER25> My favorite of all the restrictions so far is to ban recruiting at colleges and universities. The NSA recruited heavily out of my school -- many of my peers interviewed with them (it was hard to find an employer looking for _so many_ engineering new grads).

</comment><comment><USER26> Would be nice if facebook, google, ISPs and cell phone providers refused to do business with employees of the white house, congress, NSA and FBI.

Shut down their social networking and email accounts, their cell phones and their home TV and internet access.

</comment><comment><USER27> It took some digging to figure out who is backing this. It looks like it's an org called the Tenth Amendment Center. Does anyone know who these guys are? Are they reputable? Will my money actually go to _this_ cause?

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't the cooling water a closed recirculating system? That's how id design it anyway, seems wasteful to have fresh water pumped in continuously.

<comment><USER29> Heat of vaporisation of water is tremendous, and the amount of cooling you gain by allowing for evaporation is huge. You can contain the evaporative cycle, but that takes a lot more engineering. As with anything, it's a cost/benefit question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Stopping a water supply to enact damage to a part of your, supposed, democratic governmental machine sounds to me like the first act of a civil war ...

</comment><comment><USER30> This is a case of the "ends" creating a justification to open the door for the "means" to slip through.

"States rights" and "nullification" have long been used to justify trampling the constitutionally protected rights of minorities of every race, creed, color, and religion. The simplest and best way to "nullify" the NSA, is to change it.

If that takes a Constitutional Amendment, so be it. Its time to get to work.

<comment><USER31> That states rights and nullification have sometimes been used for bad purposes doesn't mean that any use of states rights and nullification is automatically bad. Your statement reads as though that's what you mean. But surely you wouldn't say that states setting their own laws regarding taxation, wages, etc. (which are an exercise of states rights) are inherently bad?

> If that takes a Constitutional Amendment, so be it. Its time to get to work.

We already have one: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

What we need is to ensure it is being followed and enforced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can the president not declare emergency and bypass the laws? The laws may not help much

<comment><USER33> No. At least I don't think so, but IANAL.

In general, bad laws are better fixed by repeal or amendment, as opposed to fiat of the executive branch, because they represent the people. The NSA spying on Americans is bad, and I believe a violation of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution. That being said, the way to fix this is through Congress or the Supreme Court.

If you really want to see progress on this front, do it through the courts and through Congress. The wheels for this are already in motion, but it could take some time to have an effect. The two biggest things that could speed this up are to convince your friends and relatives that this is an important issue, and to vote for a non-establishment candidate in the upcoming mid-term election.

Unless this becomes an issue for the average American (hint: it's not yet), or unless we get non-establishment representation in the Capitol building, this won't get fixed the way it ought to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I thought Utah was a pretty arid place, where does the water comes from ?

<comment><USER35> Underground aquifers, reservoirs from streams, rivers, etc. Northern Utah gets a fair amount of snow as well. There are around 2.9 million people living in Utah[1]. There is also a fair amount of agriculture in the state, especially up north, which uses most of the water in the state[2]. States like Arizona and New Mexico are much more arid.

[1] - [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/49000.html](http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/49000.html) [2] - [http://www.water.utah.gov/brochures/wiu_broc.htm](http://www.water.utah.gov/brochures/wiu_broc.htm)

<comment><USER34> Very interesting links thank you.

I was very surprised about the "racial" statistics in the first link.

In my country (France) it's unlawful to make this kind of statistics.

<comment><USER36> Wait, its illegal to take take racial demographic statistics in France? I find that really surprising. I went and tried to look up French census information, but alas, I could only find it in French. I can however find estimates of racial demographics in France on wikipedia and such.

<comment><USER34> Yes it's illegal.

What you probably found was people's country of origin but not their race (or it was not a French survey).

Even hinting about it will get you labeled as a racist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What equivalent or similar actions could be taken against GCHQ in the UK?

<comment><USER38> None. The only way to get rid of the GCHQ in the UK is revolution.

<comment><USER39> In ten years time, this comment of yours will automatically place you on a list of 'dissidents'. You will be targeted for heightened (full) surveillance. Your phone will be tracked, all email and phone calls recorded and scanned automatically for review by a machine. You will not be allowed to fly, or find yourself in the queue for "special searches". You will be subject to stop and search on the street under the anti terrorism act, though no policeman will actually know why you are on that list.

All of this will happen automatically. No person will have triggered this process, nor intervene on your behalf. Every TSA agent or UK equivalent will have no idea why you have been marked in the system as "terrorist/dissident". You will simply be treated as such. There will be no recourse. Your children, your siblings and your parents, plus your friends will have a slightly higher weighted bayesian 'terrorist' score placed on their files, because you know them.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow. Welcome to the real Skynet.

<comment><USER38> Actually, unless I misunderstand your attempt at wry irony, I believe that this world is now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I find it very interesting how many people claim to have intimate knowledge...now...of the most secret agency in the world where none existed before.</comment>


Dexplot: Python library for data visualization - <AUTHOR> https://www.dexplo.org/dexplot/ <comment><USER3> Of the "we really don't like matplotlib syntax, really do want to live in dataframes all the time, so we wrapped mpl and pandas" plotting libraries, plotnine has impressed me the most by far:

[https://plotnine.readthedocs.io/en/stable/](https://plotnine.readthedocs.io/en/stable/)

 _plotnine is an implementation of a grammar of graphics in Python, it is based on ggplot2. The grammar allows users to compose plots by explicitly mapping data to the visual objects that make up the plot._

<comment><USER4> I'm really fond of [https://altair-viz.github.io/](https://altair- viz.github.io/) which wraps and translates into [https://vega.github.io/vega- lite/](https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/).

The interactivity and cross-filtering possibilities is really good when you have many datapoints.

From vega-lite I miss that they did not develop object constancy ([https://bost.ocks.org/mike/constancy/](https://bost.ocks.org/mike/constancy/)) animation possibilities since they're building on top of d3.js.

<comment><USER5> I'm a big fan of Altair and have used it for demos in the past. However, restrictions such as a 5,000-row limit on dataframes and usage only inside notebooks pushes me to other solutions like Plotly.

<comment><USER6> BTW, the 5000 restriction is more a "guide" for structuring your data - <USER2> can turn it off.

Also, Altair plots can certainly be used outside of notebooks! Happy to share some examples..

<comment><USER5> Please, I couldn't find a straightforward configuration to do that

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey everyone, I'm the author of Dexplot. I have written large sections of books on seaborn, have taught it in classes for years, and had many issues with it, some of which are outlined below:

• Not allowed to set figure size

• No wrapping of tick labels

• No strings for pandas aggregation functions

• No automatic ordering of x/y labels (dexplot provides several options)

• Having to use separate grid functions (catplot, lmplot) for multiple subplots

• Something like 5 different functions for scatterplots. Dexplot has one

• No relative frequency bar charts, which are a fantastic way to explore data. Dexplot provides normalization over any set of variables

• No stacked bar charts

• Seaborn docs have distribution plots (box, violin) in the "categorical" section. A major distinction needs to be made between plots that aggregate, those that show distributions, and those that plot raw data (like scatterplots)

• Returning of matplotlib axes or seaborn grid objects. Dexplot always returns the matplotlib figure

• Seaborn is essentially dead as far as I can tell with few changes in the last 2-3 years. There are even parameters that continue to be non-functional

In the future, Dexplot will add:

• Many more plotting functions

• Several apps (built from ipywidgets) to explore data. Currently, there is one for viewing colors

• Better automatic figure sizing (it exists now, but will be improved)

• Automatic DPI detection so that matplotlib inches correspond to actual screen inches

Dexplot aims to be very intuitive, easy to use, consistent, and allow easy exploration (the name is a smashing together of data exploration plotting).

Here is one example comparison between dexplot and seaborn. [https://twitter.com/TedPetrou/status/1271436948721328129](https://twitter.com/TedPetrou/status/1271436948721328129)

Examples such as these are what drove me to create the library.

I'd love to get feedback and happy to take detailed criticism.

<comment><USER8> > Seaborn is essentially dead as far as I can tell with few changes in the > last 2-3 years. There are even parameters that continue to be non-functional

[https://seaborn.pydata.org/whatsnew.html](https://seaborn.pydata.org/whatsnew.html)

Seaborn has received a couple updates this year. Not sure what you mean by can't control figure size either. The ways to do so are inconsistent, but they're there.

> I'd love to get feedback and happy to take detailed criticism.

I like your syntax a lot. This page isn't a good way to show it. Seaborn's gallery page is excellent, even if redundant at times. I would dedicate more time to creating more easily useable docs like that. Docs are almost everything when it comes to charting.

Also need to see stuff on how to control aesthetic things like color, outlines, style, etc.

<comment><USER7> Technically, there was a new "major" release with version 0.10, but it was just some bug fixes and the same as 0.9.1. The last release with anything new was in July of 2018. Given the rate of the last several releases, I don't expect much to happen for a while, thus "essentially dead".

You cannot control axes plot figure size from seaborn directly. You have to access the figure from the axes (which most people don't know how to do) or create the figure first by importing matplotlib. Really annoying for those that just want to analyze data quickly. Grid plots have the ability to adjust figure size, but return a seaborn object and not a matplotlib figure.

Agreed, docs need to get better. Better datasets, a gallery, etc... I've only spent a week on this, so there will be a lot of improvements in the future.

<comment><USER8> Hey for what it's worth I think this is really impressive for only a week!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I personally find the Python plotting landscape a mess and confusing. It always seems to be a lot harder than is necessary to do anything and make it look good.

<comment><USER10> I agree! I found this presentation invaluable in getting a good overview of the landscape and the different segments within: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FytuB8nFHPQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FytuB8nFHPQ)

It helped me settle on [https://altair-viz.github.io/](https://altair- viz.github.io/) (coming from matplotlib) and I never looked back

<comment><USER6> I find the big benefit of Altair is that the API is so nice and composable, and because vega provides a ton out of the box to build really high quality visualisations.

For instance, if you take this (sample) report using Altair to plot Default Alive / Default Dead: [https://datapane.com/leo/reports/startup_finance_report/](https://datapane.com/leo/reports/startup_finance_report/) \- the interactive code is actually relatively small: [https://gist.github.com/lanthias/5a41c1e4b21ae274ddb95cf5ad1...](https://gist.github.com/lanthias/5a41c1e4b21ae274ddb95cf5ad10b4ac)

It's also great being able to add Altair shapes to Folium for geoplotting (as the vega geoplotting is a bit more low-level).

What I really think is missing in the ecosystem is a "vega for tables", so you could be rich, interactive tables with a similar grammar. That would rock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am a bit confused why we need another additional package instead of working with seaborn and implement the changes in there.

In my business, we have a lot of test data on a database, where everyone uses their own python-based solutions for plotting, mostly done in a Jupyter notebook.

Guess what, to compare results and have one dedicated style-guide for the project, you create more complexity than needed.

-> I tried Orange3 for a while, which has a really intuitive way to use, but I miss the direct connection to a DB. Any advice warmly welcome :-)

<comment><USER7> Hey there, I'm the author of Dexplot. There are many issues I had with seaborn

• Not allowed to set figure size

• No wrapping of tick labels

• No strings for pandas aggregation functions

• No automatic ordering of x/y labels (dexplot provides several options)

• Having to use separate grid functions (catplot, lmplot) for multiple subplots

• Something like 5 different functions for scatterplots. Dexplot has one

• No relative frequency bar charts, which are a fantastic way to explore data. Dexplot provides normalization over any set of variable

• No stacked bar charts

• Seaborn docs have distribution plots (box, violin) in the "categorical" section. A major distinction needs to be made between plots that aggregate, show distributions, and those that plot raw data (like scatterplots)

• Returning of matplotlib axes or seaborn grid objects. Dexplot always returns the matplotlib figure

• Seaborn is essentially dead as far as I can tell with few changes in the last 2-3 years. There are even parameters that continue to be non-functional

In the future, Dexplot will add:

• Many more plotting functions

• Several apps (built from ipywidgets) to explore data. Currently, there is one for viewing colors

• Better automatic figure sizing (it exists now, but will be improved)

• Automatic DPI detection so that matplotlib inches correspond to actual screen inches

Dexplot aims to be very intuitive, easy to use, consistent, and allow easy exploration (the name is a smashing together of data exploration plotting).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great work. This is easily among the most elegant Python plotting APIs for exploratory data analysis. Seaborn is a fantastic tool but I sympathise with the author's frustrations with it.

Excellent documentation, but as others have said docs are everything with charting, so expanding that and adding a gallery are probably the best ways to get people onboard. Looking forward to giving this a try.

</comment><comment><USER13> The facet options with the simple "split" arguments look quite nice.

</comment><comment><USER14> How do people feel about Plotly?

I've been using it for years and by far it's been the easiest plotting library (while still being really flexible).

The company is very active in developing, for example recently adding plotly_express, which lets me get charts with one liners like: px.line(df, x='x_column', y='y_column')

I'm not affiliated with Plotly but just curious what people think since I find it to be an awesome library but I rarely hear about it or meet people who use it.

<comment><USER8> Last I checked I was only 99.9% sure that nothing was ever being sent to plotly servers. I needed it to be 100%, not even possible for that to happen.

edit: but due to this post I checked again and it seems this is no longer an issue. So +1 to plotly.

<comment><USER15> Yes, here's the official word on this, under "Can I use Plotly for Python offline, without being connected to the internet?" [https://plotly.com/python/is-plotly-free/](https://plotly.com/python/is- plotly-free/)

<comment><USER8> In past versions, although free, it's default settings would try to ping their servers. You had to manually set offline mode to False.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Again a static default plot library? I would love to see some libraries with higher level visualizations like parallel coordinates, star coordinates and so on. I know, they require interaction, but hey ... why not spending time on this and not again a default plot library? Bar plot stays a bar plot, doesn't matter if you plot it with mpl or seaborn or whatever.

<comment><USER17> Plotly is pretty great for that sort of thing. It has those sorts of things built in.

<comment><USER18> And for those who missed the announcement, plotly is now an open source library (it used to be a web service where you needed an API key and had to upload data to their servers, etc.) You still get all the "polish" (nice docs, consistent API, examples, etc.) that went into it when it was a commercial product.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for mentioning this! If people are curious, here's the official announcement: [https://medium.com/plotly/plotly-py-4-0-is-here-offline- only...](https://medium.com/plotly/plotly-py-4-0-is-here-offline-only-express- first-displayable-anywhere-fc444e5659ee)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The same creators have a few other interesting packages on the same site.

The dexplo package (a dataframe libray) also sounds really interesting. They also have a barchart race, which looks like an excellent way to get to the front page of Reddit's r/dataisbeautiful

<comment><USER7> Thanks! The whole goal of dexplo and dexplot is to provide a much simpler and more consistent alternative to pandas/seaborn. I find pandas especially cumbersome to work with. I haven't had time to develop dexplo much, but am hoping for a first major release this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thank you for sharing.

I'm curious, how does this compare to Chartify [1]? Note, I am not affiliated with Spotify or the Chartify team.

[1] [https://github.com/spotify/chartify](https://github.com/spotify/chartify)

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't want to be too snarky, but "beautiful data visualizations" does not go well with typographic errors on the example pages:

\- overlap of label

\- HTML tables overlapping the right many bar

<comment><USER7> Labels do not overlap and HTML tables are now fixed in the docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Without PDF output it's a chore to share visualizations over email, chat, etc. The _uncharted_ aspect of data visualization is reporting and sharing IMHO.

<comment><USER6> Hey, that's what we do at Datapane! [https://docs.datapane.com/tutorials/tut- creating-a-report](https://docs.datapane.com/tutorials/tut-creating-a-report) \- you can create a standalone HTML report which contains interactive tables and plots.

You can also publish this to the web ([https://datapane.com/leo/reports/stock_report_5d2925b9/](https://datapane.com/leo/reports/stock_report_5d2925b9/)), embed it into social media ([https://medium.com/@leo_26134/embedding-with- datapane-366e60...](https://medium.com/@leo_26134/embedding-with- datapane-366e60434b5f)), or deploy your Jupyter Notebook or Python script so that other people can run them with parameters to generate reports dynamically.

It's still pretty new, so if there's anything you'd like to see, give me a shout at leo [at] datapane.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love the simplicity

</comment><comment><USER24> Might want to change your grid settings so site makes better use of large screen real estate. The plots are overflowing under the right side nav.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's not clear how this API works from scanning the docs, but nested in there is a key point:

> A matplotlib figure object is returned [from each plot function]</comment>


Tutorial on Good Lisp Programming Style - b-man http://norvig.com/luv-slides.ps

<comment><AUTHOR> Know this links directly to a .ps file download before you click</comment>


Show HN: my new startup HowsMyUX.com  - <AUTHOR> http://howsmyux.com/

<comment><USER2> so you're helping developers find designers? I'd make it a priority to find one for your site first - even do a before/after.

You need to use your service on yourself first before you can expect anyone else to buy into it.

Although I like the idea. As a designer, I'd sign up to somewhere that I could help out developers (who can't design).</comment>


Show HN: Learn Evolutionary Algorithms with Python Notebooks - <AUTHOR> https://store.shahinrostami.com/product/practical-evolutionary-algorithms-book/ <comment><USER2> That is so cool. And complicated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :) do you have any ideas on how I can make it more friendly (less complicated)?</comment></comment>


Proof-of-work system - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_work <comment><USER2> The canonical proof-of-work system, hashcash, tries to solve the problems "free e-mail makes spamming profitable" and "users won't pay for e-mail" by imposing a cost in CPU time on the sender: this is free[1] for a normal sender, but a spammer will only be able to send out a limited number of e-mails.

Unfortunately, this idea doesn't actually work. If an old "dumb" phone can send e-mail to a couple of your friends, a cool gaming rig can send zillions[2]. (Limiting senders by memory bandwidth instead of CPU power helps, but I'm not sure if that's enough.) Spammers have been using botnets for a long time. I'm also not aware of any scheme that has considered attacks based on custom hardware.

Mailing lists are also a problem.

[1] Of course, the extra calculations do increase power use, but that's sufficiently invisible that people won't actually care. For instance, SETI@home and other BOINC projects may consume ~$7.40 per month in electricity, but people generally don't care (source: [http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Heat_and_energy_consideration...](http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Heat_and_energy_considerations)).

[2] [EDIT: added in response to andrewcooke.] Let's substitute a cheaper computer (because it's indeed more cost-effective than a gaming rig), and guess at some figures.

Assume your 100x speedup (four-core 2GHz vs single-core 100MHz gets you to 80x; highly-optimized vs crappy code can probably get you far higher, but let's stick with 100x for now.) If the phone can send one message per 10 seconds, the PC would send out 100 x 24 x 60 x 60 / 10 = 864 000 messages per day (assuming it's only limited by the proof-of-work!) [http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/networking/2008-ccs- spamal...](http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/networking/2008-ccs-spamal..). cites a ~0.00001% conversion rate on a ~$100 product, or a profit of $1/10 000 messages; that would allow a mind-blowing $86 of scalable profit per day.

In reality, that message count sounds unreasonably high - I'd guess the spammer runs into bandwidth/antispam limitations before CPU limitations.

<comment><USER3> i'm not sure how much "zillions" is, but it's not at all clear to me that it's large enough for spam to remain profitable if they use their own machines. i suspect the difference in computing power is only 100 or so (you can get low- power servers using atoms...) and that a spammer needs to send millions of emails to get an edge.

however, it doesn't work well against bot nets (and i think that's where most spam comes from).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am currently working on a course project that involves bolting a proof-of- work system onto DNS to throttle connections to servers. Using IPv6, the DNS server can return an IPv6 address that is usable only by the requesting client because it was randomized in the lower 64-bits and is firewalled from other clients. I've put the project on GitHub and would appreciate any comments!

<https://github.com/jevinskie/SlothNS>

<comment><USER2> The idea is cool, but I'm somewhat unclear on the economic model that would make it work. Certainly, if I can connect to visa.com within a reasonable time, Anonymous would have no meaningful trouble DDoS'ing it. Requiring a new unit of work for every new connection may or may not allow legitimate requests while making DDoS infeasible; the linked Wikipedia page gives to some papers that may help you build such an economic model, if you want to look at this. Note that [http://www.csoonline.com/article/220336/how-a-bookmaker- and-...](http://www.csoonline.com/article/220336/how-a-bookmaker-and-a-whiz- kid-took-on-a-ddos-based-online-extortion-attack) suggests that DDoS attacks were (in 2005) quite a bit more profitable than spam runs. Google "dos extortion" for much more, including Symantec saying that DoS extortion was no longer profitable in 2007.

I'm not sure you actually need IPv6; can't you just use 2^15 (optionally unused) ports in the registered ports range (1024-49151) for your scheme? If you're worried about firewalls blocking traffic to such uncommon ports, you could use a single port on a class C network (256 hosts) if you're willing to blacklist anyone connecting to the wrong host (which runs a risk of wrongly blacklisting people behind a NAT).

Have you chosen which PoW function you are going to use yet? I've looked into this stuff a bit and I thought <http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~naor/PAPERS/mem_abs.html> looked cool, but I've never seen an implementation. If you happen to implement something like that, could you drop me a line on your experiences/benchmarks (e-mail in profile)? Questions are also welcome.

Of course, you're aware that this proposal is never going to be implemented, right? People won't accept extra connection latency, it requires every single resolver to be updated (because you need to block clients that didn't do the PoW), it's incompatible with caching, etc. I don't think this is that big of a problem - it's just an exercise - but don't expect to convince the BIND maintainers.

I do think the idea is quite cool, though.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Did anyone ever think of creating a proof-of-work system that would allocate some CPU time to do something useful for humanity? Maybe for medical research or something... Could it even work technically?

<comment><USER5> I suppose its not worth distributing this task across the network if each node will only have .5 second computing time each time.

<comment><USER6> It is if that work is only a byproduct of a system such as described in the article. It's essentially "free" computation, even if it is only in tiny chunks. If the system became widespread, it would quickly add up. And why not?

<comment><USER2> For most applications of a proof-of-work system, you need to be able to verify the results quickly,. In addition, while the aggregate CPU power is pretty hefty, communication overhead is _huge_. There are not many useful problems that fit these constraints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a really good read when you start getting into the technicalities of bitcoins implementation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could an unintended side effect of this be that it encourages spammers to create even more botnets to run these computations?</comment>


Xerox Considers Takeover Offer for HP - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/xerox-considers-takeover-offer-for-hp-11573012201?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> In the words of Scott McNealy, "Everyone likes to hold hands while circling the drain." (I believe he made that comment when SGI agreed to acquire Cray.)

It is interesting to me as a technologist to remember these companies as both powerhouses in their domains and failing enterprises. What I don't know is what allows a company to successfully 're-invent' itself or to recover its core values and return to a previously powerful position. IBM did that once transitioning from PCs, Microsoft seems to have done it, and Apple pulled it off when Steve Jobs returned. SGI died, MIPS is nearly dead, Sun is dead, Compaq died, Dell might be considered a comeback, National Semiconductor died, AT&T Bell Labs died, Northern Telcom died, Polaroid died, Kodak is nearly dead.

There are obvious issues when the accountants take over and start squeezing the cash out of a company, and companies that just keep getting deeper and deeper into a technology that isn't going to survive when something new has come along. But why are these events so crippling that companies that have the resources to re-invent themselves seem to so often fail to do so?

<comment><USER3> Think it comes down to incentive structures and what kind of behavior is rewarded. In a well functioning company people creating value bottom up see an upward trajectory in their careers. Companies that lose their way end up in a limbo state where power brokers, star communicators, coordinators end up capturing all the value and the act of creating bottom up value becomes an irrational act. An employee will do exceptional work if they have some kind of belief that they will be able to monetize it by capturing some of the value created. Once this belief evaporates doing great work becomes a fools errand. We (humans) appear to be hard wired to reverse engineer the incentive structures both explicit and implicit in any given situation.

<comment><USER4> I've basically seen this happen at my former employer. They started an industry, made hundreds of millions, but instead of investing in development, the executives all receive massive bonuses. Competition is now creeping in and they have no way to compete. What was once new and innovative tech is now legacy enterprise. Instead of a cooperative relationship with customers it has become adversarial. Instead of hiring engineers and building better technology that sells itself as it once did, they hire salesmen to negotiate multiyear reoccurring contracts.

<comment><USER5> I have often thought it would be a good idea if employees had a voice in the salaries of their bosses. That would prevent mediocre executives from looting a company like that. If an executive is really good and benefits the company as a whole, sure give them a high salary to keep them on board. But if they're mostly profiting from the hard work of the rest of the company, and don't want to reinvest the profits back into the company or share it with the employees, then why should they be getting these massive salaries?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A company with $10bn revenue buys one with $58bn revenue. This comes after cancelling a merger and nearly getting sued for $1bn because they last-minute- cancelled a merger with Fujifilm.

Sounds totally healthy and not at all like some financial game played by Xerox's activist investors.

Prediction: if this happens the joint company will be worth nothing in 2030. They are already now kicking out lots of staff, so are probably as usual destroying the R&D departments in favour of short term profit margins.

</comment><comment><USER7> Xerox Holdings Corporation (XRX) =Market Cap 8.071B HP Inc. (HPQ) = Market Cap 26.638B Xerox ended Fujifilm joint venture today and is already trying a new multibillion-dollar business. I had no idea they still had some relevant product in the global market. But it is very likely that these advances are more about a financial game of activist investors than a long-term plan.

<comment><USER8> Xerox is huge in the services business, that's why HP looks good to them, they also still make tons and tons of printers, from big to small

<comment><USER9> What services business? Xerox makes almost all of its revenue from selling or renting printers/copiers. HP itself spun off its services business a little while ago (HPE is a completely different company now).

This is essentially a move for two companies in similar segments that see a slow death on the horizon to combine to cut costs and hope for a successful pivot. It makes sense as well, since the market for printers is already too small for two major players and is just shrinking every year.

<comment><USER10> > What services business?

They also do document conversion, although I'm unsure of what the business is called publicly (maybe this [1]). They take documents in practically any format and do language conversion, whilst maintaining formatting (a super hard problem). As I understand they get a considerable amount of business from converting technical documents.

[1] [https://xeroxtranslates.com/](https://xeroxtranslates.com/)

<comment><USER11> kudos. that's really interesting, actually. never would've pegged xerox to be in the high-end translation game. neat service

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just read a Reuters article on the legal action that was recently found in Fuji's favour, it said that Xerox relies on Fuji for copiers. The new Xerox management is anti-Fuji merger, so buying HP makes sense as an alternative source of copiers to Fuji.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-xerox- fujifilm/fujifilm-w...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-xerox- fujifilm/fujifilm-wins-appeal-in-battle-with-xerox-over-aborted-merger- idUSKCN1MR09F)

</comment><comment><USER13> It is very important to remember that this isn't the "real HP", it's just some generic PC OEM with the name. The real HP lived on as Agilent.

<comment><USER14> Even Agilent didn't like the real HP and kicked them to the curb as Keysight. I hope that when the HP name is up on the auction block, Keysight is smart enough to take it back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This makes no sense, HP is in much better position than Xerox. HP has the best inkjet technology, overall software/firmware and recently absorbed Samsung's printer business which gives them a great laser portfolio as well. Xerox is only a few years removed with flirting with bankruptcy.

Disclosure: used to work on HP printers several years ago

<comment><USER16> Maybe you can answer this question for me: Why does HP not have a good ink tank printer based on the shell of something like the HP OfficeJet 3830?

It seems like Canon, Epson and Brother are the only real current options for ink tank / bottle refill printers.

<comment><USER15> HP does have ink tank printers, but I believe they are only sold in emerging markets.

[https://store.hp.com/id-en/default/printers-hp-ink-tank- syst...](https://store.hp.com/id-en/default/printers-hp-ink-tank-system)

In developed economies HP was/is pushing for users to use its "Ink subscription" service. I am assuming that using cartridges has higher margins for HP. The business model for HP is to make money selling supplies, and with ink tank printers it is trivial for a customer to use non-OEM refills.

<comment><USER16> That's interesting. In South Africa, at the moment, they also don't have widely available ink tank printers. The two main ones sold at most shops are Epson and Canon, with Epson having the most aggressive marketing campaign of the two. The nice thing about Canon's offering is that they took some of their older designs (that people are used to) and stuck in the ink tank. Epson's offering is the cheapest, with an entry level but not bottom of the range costing about USD 140.

Edit: No document feeder on that HP! That's disappointing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I used to work testing printers for Xerox. Back then they were benchmarking their printers against the HP ones that performed a lot better. This is a bold move but one that I'm not sure will ever pay off. I always thought printers and consumer electronics is a low margin business and not something people really want to be in.

</comment><comment><USER18> HP stock already up 10% in pre-market alone, based on this rumour: [https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HPQ?p=HPQ&.tsrc=fin-tre- srch](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HPQ?p=HPQ&.tsrc=fin-tre-srch)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm reminded of Steve Job's insight into why Xerox failed to capitalize on their Alto/Star tech:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rXqD6M614](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rXqD6M614)

</comment><comment><USER20> Apple is at an all-time high and Xerox is circling the drain. Pretty amazing to see what Apple has become with the point-in-the-right-direction Steve got from Xerox all those years ago.

<comment><USER21> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8979051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8979051)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does this mean that support from my Samsung printer will now come from Xerox? I was appalled to discover I had to contact HP for support.

</comment><comment><USER22> If Xerox buys HP, is someone else going to buy HPE? (Any speculation on who?)

<comment><USER23> EMC was in talks with HPE before deciding to merge with Dell. The next logical player would be Cisco. A merger with Oracle doesn't sound likely but isn't outside the realm of possibility.

HPE is a more complex acquisition now since they've started pouring more investment into supercomputing, which heavily depends on getting a few good long term deals. They're no longer a pure infrastructure play.

But if someone buys HP it shouldn't have any effect on HPE. These are separate topics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Isn't HP the number one server vendor in the world? Who is xerox? Maker of dying tech. Doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER25> That would be post-split HPE, not HP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-06/xerox- con...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-06/xerox-considers- takeover-offer-for-hp-dow-jones-says)

Bloomberg link with no paywall

</comment><comment><USER27> Printer companies belong together.</comment>