Why Most Businesses Fail (A Theoretical Model) - <AUTHOR> http://www.marktaw.com/Work_and_Business/Why-Businesses-Fail.html <comment><USER2> "Don't allow yourself to get desperate. Studies about how people make decisions when under pressure show that you lose flexibility when there's a deadline looming. You try the first thing that comes to mind, and unless you're an expert, it's frequently the wrong thing (and even when you're an expert it's frequently the wrong thing). (Klein, 1998)"

This rings true, but where could I read more online about these studies?

<comment><USER3> For those interested, the paper (at least I think): Klein, Gary. Naturalistic Decision Making. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 50, no. 3 (June 1, 2008): 456-460. <http://hfs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/50/3/456>. PDF: <http://hfs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/50/3/456.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it hard to accept that the majority of small businesses last that long without making an operating profit, 8 years of continuous loss? What bank would accept this?

I'm referring to retail banking which is the norm outside the atypical tech start ups sector of all new entrant small businesses.

I'm assuming that a good chunk of all new businesses started are restaurants, corner stores, dentists & hair dressers etc. Surely it can't possibly be that these guys have to tough out a curve like this/face such a failure rate, which begs the question; if hairdressers can run a small business reliably then why can't a tech company aim to produce value right from the start?

<comment><USER5> Many businesses aren't funded by banks. They're bootstrapped the entire way. It's not uncommon for a business to lose money for the first few years, it's actually the norm. According to the US SBA, 50% of new businesses fail in the first 5 years.

<comment><USER6> That's a misleading statistic because the IRS only allows you claim deductions on a money-losing primary income generator for the first five years.

After that, it's reclassified as a hobby, and you can't deduct for it any more, so businesses either suddenly start submitting tax returns that show they're breaking even or profitable, or they stop submitting them altogether (have "closed" or "failed").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> His article is pretty dark and I can not fully share the theoretical models. Clearly he wants to use a simple model for a visual representation and that is fine for the purpose. But the assumption of a fixed 4% increase in revenue is to simplistic for me. Either the product has some traction and success than the percentage numbers will be far higher, which totally changes the graphs dynamics or it does not generate sales. Than the product should be rather sooner than later changed or axed. There are many other reasons why business are not successful short term or long term, than just revenue/expenses.</comment>


VMware VSphere Goes Kubernetes Native - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoworld.com/article/3433942/vmware-vsphere-goes-kubernetes-native.html <comment><USER2> So, in this scenario, if you spin up a pod with a docker image, does it fire up a whole VM with the image running in it? What are the restrictions on network plug-ins?

So many questions...</comment>


The Cost of a Chargeback - <AUTHOR> http://chargify.com/blog/the-cost-of-a-chargeback-infographic/ <comment><USER2> Lovely visualization. Thanks for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not my cup of tea - that infographic turned me off the content. Everyone digests data differently, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't read text on image in some places. Too small image =(</comment>


Ask HN: How do you reduce cognitive load? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I keep a list of things that need doing. I use alarms to give me a heads-up when something is supposed to happen or I have to change tracks. Without an alarm, I would miss meetings, appointments, and possibly food breaks.

At the beginning of the day, I try to have one to three largish goals for the day. I might break those into milestones for each goal. Or if I have lots of little things, I might have it broken up as three goals for the morning, three during the early afternoon, and three at evening.

I subscribe to the don't worry philosophy. If I can't affect something, don't worry about it. If I can affect it, either chose to or not to do something about it and don't worry about it.

I deligate (and follow up - again, prompted by an alarm or calendar event) where I can. In my personal life, I'm lucky to have a great partner who shares in the load by handling most of the domestic stuff.

I avoid multitasking. It is a great way to do multiple things poorly. If I have to switch gears, I try to leave some notes to help pick back up when I get back to it.

Though I've fallen out of the habit, daily weight and cardio training helps so much. Planning on getting back to that today, as it so happens.

Take down time. Liesure is important. A game of billiards. Sitting outside watching the scenery change. Reading a fun book. Play a game, video or board variety. Meet a friend or few for some hanging out.

</comment><comment><USER3> I focus on having what I call a heathy dose of self care.

Like - I go to sleep at the same time every day.

I watch TV - but only on the treadmill. I don't watch TV NEWS ever. It's such a waste and uninformative.

Move your phone/computer away from your bed. Put it in another room. (it slows down casual use more than you would think).

Workout 3-5 times a week. If it's a day you don't work out - stretch or walk fast for 10-15 min. Little things make a difference.

I only eat sugar on my day off. Partly to lose weight and subconsciously eat less of it - without doing some sort of "AlL or nothing". I can feel a difference - but maybe it's just in my head.

I read 1 hr everyday. I used to study many different topics, but not I work to make sure that half my reading time is spent on pure enjoyment... last enjoyment topic: Aurora Borealis

I'm sure there is more - but that should be a good start.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a simple wardrobe of mostly black clothes that I feel very comfortable in.

I eat pretty much the same 10 dishes that I love.

I try my best to not worry about things that I have no control over and I avoid drama. I don't tolerate whining so I skip whining and go straight to problem solving. I am very intentional about who I spend my time with and how I spend my time.

I journal every day, write when I need help processing, and/or ask for help when I need to.

I am always conscious about what I'm working towards and what I need to improve on. This helps me make decisions easily and prioritize.

I only focus on one thing at a time. When I need to do something I get it done so I don't have to worry about it and move on to the next.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wear essentially the same clothing every day: jeans, which I try to buy the same version of and a black t-shirt. I do have other thing for special occasions, but in general I don't have to worry about anything.

Same thing with writing down things like appointments. Google, for all its faults, is much much better at remembering things than I am. Plus when I have things in a system that I trust my mind stops bugging me about it.

I guess the meta-answer is to never do something that a) doesn't matter or b) can be done better by a machine.

</comment><comment><USER6> I stopped wasting time on trying to keep track of _everything_.

For news: Given the relatively low depth of most news these days, I mentally keep track of relevant headlines and wait until one or two sites write more in-depth commentary. I also don't watch TV news anymore.

For books: I use Goodreads as a collaborative filter and wait until people I follow rate specific books, then shortlist ten a month, and eventually pick out two or three (technical or non-technical). I do read a _lot_, though.

For social media: I very aggressively trim down on Twitter follows, ignore Facebook, and even though I skim HN daily, I only sit down and _read_ through it on quiet (rainy) mornings. :)

<comment><USER7> > I also don't watch TV news anymore.

Bravo, this is what most people should do. I think the daily news cycle is as toxic, if not more than, facebook. The pressure to produce daily news gives us a dose of daily useless fluff. I think the news channels are the main contributors to the political division in this country. They feed one side and make sure they position viewers against the other. Good entertainment but toxic to the well being of the country. It's really entertainment - newsteinment, to coin a phrase.

<comment><USER6> A little clarification: I don't live in the US, but we get enough trash talk about US politics (in betwixt our own) to establish a baseline, and believe me, I feel your pain.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook verifies fake account of an Indian Journalist. Starts Crowfunding. - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ppbajpai/status/1143872569654648832 <comment><AUTHOR> Translation: Amazing. Truth of Facebook verification. A fake account got verified.

Follow-on Tweet 1. [https://twitter.com/ppbajpai/status/1144109957001834496](https://twitter.com/ppbajpai/status/1144109957001834496) [Next tweet says that the account got deleted after 8 hours. Now if the other 40 will get removed or not?]

Follow-on Tweet 2: [https://twitter.com/ppbajpai/status/1144155472032702465](https://twitter.com/ppbajpai/status/1144155472032702465) [Crowdfunding campaign issued by the verified account through Ketto has been shut down with funds returned. Police has been notified.]

Punya Prasun Bajpai is an Indian journalist, who goes against the grain and questions the establishment.</comment>


Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress injects Black Friday adverts without permission - <AUTHOR> https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wordpress-seo/reviews/ <comment><USER2> Let's get a few things right since the link is misleading.

\- It was an upsell to the Pro version of free plugin. Not some random ad spam.

\- The ad was an admin notice - which appear in WordPress on top of every page in the backend Admin Area in what's generally the notification area.

\- It's free, GPL, and open source - you know, "No Warranties" and all that.

Grayhat, and not something you should ever do. But not as nefarious as everyone is making it sound like.

WP.org is about freedom, so they're unlikely to restrict it either unless _malicious_ : [https://github.com/WordPress/wporg-plugin- guidelines/pull/69...](https://github.com/WordPress/wporg-plugin- guidelines/pull/69#issuecomment-560011084)

Being very involved in the WordPress industry, what I find funny is the majority of angry reviews masquerading as victims are from entitled pseudo devs who sell WordPress sites to clients and now they were made to look bad because they had automatic updates enabled while charging their customers for a retainer package with "plugin & themes updates".

How about buying premium version in the first place just as you charged your client for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. It goes directly against the WordPress Detailed Plugin Guidelines to both upsell, and to hijack the admin dashboard [0].

2\. If the ad was an admin notice, it didn't look like one. It's a banner image with an outbound tracking link [1].

[0] [https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress- org/detail...](https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/detailed- plugin-guidelines/) [1] [https://imgur.com/a/oN7ZFRU](https://imgur.com/a/oN7ZFRU)

<comment><USER3> Neither could you click the [X], or it was intentional overlapped for people to missclick. Crooks.

<comment><USER4> It _was_ hard to click, but I managed to click it, and it worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a big fan of vanilla WordPress, especially the new block editor, but the plugin ecosystem is a total mess. Almost all popular plugins come with a free version that spams you to upgrade to "pro". They add menu items to the admin panel with different colours so you find it harder to ignore them. They add messages to the dashboard. The look and feel of their settings pages don't match WordPress core. And, even if you pay for an upgrade, that usually means removing the plugin provided and automatically updated by WordPress.org and replacing it with a manually uploaded zip. Crazy.

The garbage user experience with most plugins led me to collect together a bunch of ideas from plugins I used and rewrite almost all of them entirely into one spam-free plugin. I did it for my own sanity as a user of my own plugin but I'd like to see more " old fashioned" plugins that are providing high quality code for everyone's free benefit.

<comment><USER6> Have you released this plugin?

<comment><USER7> Making a functional plugin for one's own purposes is one thing, releasing it to the public requires quite a lot more work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Yoast CEO Marieke van de Rakt responded on Twitter:

> That BlackFridayBanner was not the best idea. We're truly sorry for the > annoyance and difficulties it may have caused. We did not think this through > properly. If you want, you can update to a new version of our plugin without > that banner. #blackfriday #neveragain #apologies"[1]

> I OK'd this. I am the CEO. And I made a big mistake. I am sorry. [2]

[1] [https://twitter.com/MariekeRakt/status/1200077958700044290](https://twitter.com/MariekeRakt/status/1200077958700044290)

[2] [https://twitter.com/MariekeRakt/status/1200077958700044290](https://twitter.com/MariekeRakt/status/1200077958700044290)

<comment><USER5> > "Truly sorry"

I'd prefer it if CEOs would rather say "we got too greedy and clearly the market didn't like it" rather than disingenuous apologies.

<comment><USER9> I have a lot more respect for a response that contains the words "sorry" and a statement that the entity admits that they made a mistake, vs. the usual corporate statement that contains neither.

<comment><USER10> The apology is basically the modern version of that corporate statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those not deep into the WP community reading this headline: Yoast injected an ad into the WP admin pages (every admin page), not into public WP sites. The headline sounds much worse than it is - this is just an annoyance for editors, not Yoast abusing its reach to target billions of worldwide website readers.

Naturally that doesn't excuse the spam.

</comment><comment><USER12> When people rip on WordPress development this is the sorta crap they're talking about.

In many ecosystems this would warrant the plugin getting pulled from the ecosystem but WP just lets it fly.

<comment><USER13> I think a lot of the rip is from Wordpress generally being insecure. You can have it locally and treat it like Jekyll and have your json sent to git and published to something like Netify.

<comment><USER12> > I think a lot of the rip is from WordPress generally being insecure.

That too - I put adware on my wp-admin pages in the same boat.

I've seen the JSON publishing route and I'm not 100% impressed with how it operates. In most WP situations you want to give people who are non-devs the capability to manage content which local setups like this don't accommodate well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> this was the worst spam of all my wordpress experience. a yoast banner on every admin page - yoast must have gone crazy. I took screenshots of this shameful moment.

wordpress plugin as well as mobile app stores are reminiscent of the ugly pc shareware and freewares of past 30 decades.

<comment><USER15> I don't use wordpress/yoast so am probably wrong. But I don't think splashscreens on shareware is 'ugly', I think it's fair enough. In some instances - such as Sublime Text - I am amazed at how discreet it is.

<comment><USER9> I suspect Sublime realizes that they have three classes of customers:

1\. Companies

2\. Private individuals who are happy to pay for software

3\. Private individuals who aren't going to pay for software

The discreet notification is enough to get 1+2 to pay. Group 3 isn't going to pay anyways, and making the notification more annoying will just make it more likely that they crack it and never see it again. Most importantly, when people from group 3 start working at a company, they may get the company to buy a license (which is now a subscription, i.e. makes them a lot more money than a personal license).

A more annoying notification would likely win them very little, and lose them a lot (from people who use a different editor instead).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, people need to learn not to depend on redundant Wordpress plugins.

The plugin-landscape in Wordpress is plagued by bugs and ads, some spamming you to update or pay for a premium version. That is not something you would accept for professional CMS solutions.

If you consider yourself knowledgeable in SEO, then learn to walk the talk and stop relying on phony third-party plugins!

SEO is such a small part of owning a website, and ideally, any technical SEO that is needed should be integrated in the core CMS by developers and not fiddled with at random by clueless bloggers or SEO gurus.

Since Wordpress is such "crapware" out-of-the-box, you can easily create a Yoast replacement plugin to handle what is really needed. The rest is just useless bloat and clutter.

I would not touch Yoast in my wildest dream. It is totally redundant for people who can code themselves.

<comment><USER17> 'Since Wordpress is such "crapware" out-of-the-box, you can easily create a Yoast replacement plugin ...'

The cynic in me wonders why such basics are not already included by now?

<comment><USER18> Because of Matt Mullenweg's strange philosophy of keeping only barebones features in "core" Wordpress and having all other functionality be delivered by plugins. This means that even to have a basic site, you just have to install various plugins to deliver key features, which leads to the bloat, instability and security problems that Wordpress is infamous for.

<comment><USER19> > strange philosophy

He likes to avoid bloat and keep things modular. That's not a 'strange' philosophy

<comment><USER20> Modularity isn't free. Wordpress' obsession with it – and bad implementation of it – leads to bizarre, 80000+ recursion level deep callback hells even on simple pages once you have 3-4 plugins running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's an incredible number of people they've managed to piss off with that ad! This sounds like a plausible theory:

> Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this was an advertising stunt to create > a viral situation for additional exposure.[0]

[0]: [https://wordpress.org/support/topic/spammy-black-friday- on-e...](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/spammy-black-friday-on-every- admin-page/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like a pretty risky move, but the owner has historically been controversial so wouldn't be too surprised.

[https://wptavern.com/yoastcon-overshadowed-by-twitter- storm-...](https://wptavern.com/yoastcon-overshadowed-by-twitter-storm-joost- de-valk-seo-industry-leaders-called-out-for-objectifying-women)

<comment><USER22> Actually the comments indicate that the "controversy" seems to be imagined by many people. By the way, I don't know anything about Joost, so he may not be innocent. But the article is an excellent example of an inability to distinguish between consensual but obnoxious stuff and clearly non-consensual behavior.

Also read the comment by Jenny Halasz, it seems very telling: "I had the audacity to start a thread on twitter where I suggested that perhaps we should ask the women involved if they were being harassed before we leveled accusations at the supposed harasser.

For my trouble, I got called a woman hater, an enabler, and plenty of other terrible things (now conveniently deleted by the people who said those awful things: Cohen, Rayner, a handle by the name of callis1987, and Forden)"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> if only people here held their FANG bosses to the same standard they hold _wordpress plugin developers_ ... there would be less complaining

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps Yoast thought they were cleaver. I hope someone reads this who works there. Because of "this", and as a precaution for further abuse one of my agencies removed Yoast SEO from over 2000 Wordpress-sites last week.

Update: Just found out that Yoast CEO is a woman and apologize with GIF:s on Twitter. Awaiting my ban and #forevershame.

<comment><USER24> Which SEO plugin did your agency go with?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> glad I'm not the only one who was annoyed by this. it's not a _huge_ deal, but it made me "WTF?"

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree - to me, it _is_ a huge deal. It's an overstep of a boundary that definitely should not have been crossed.

Yoast has always been borderline spammy with their upgrade nags, but at least historically they followed the WordPress guidelines and kept them inside of the Yoast pages. But flat-out injecting ads into every admin page with not much context is a step too far in my opinion.

As far as I'm concerned, automattic should revoke their wordpress.org plugin hosting until this has been addressed (as this clearly violates their hosting guidelines) and a public apology is issued.

<comment><USER26> It has been addressed and their CEO offered hundreds of apologies on Twitter. It is definitely not okay and I would still not use them as there are better plugins out there, but they (now) say they made a mistake and owned it.

<comment><USER27> which SEO plugins would you recommend?

<comment><USER26> The SEO framework (slug: autodescription) is great and performs about 30x as good as Yoast SEO in terms of processing time. They're also pretty strict about sticking to WordPress' native styles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> article thread is a dupe of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21661075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21661075) (?)

could / should (?) be merged.

as for all the doom and gloom, I think the main thing that makes this so bad is that the ad was hard to close - the X was not very visible / easy to click, some said clicking it still brought you to ad site...

to me the bad thing was that the ad was moving / not static. Might be time for a checkbox, 'allow plugins to show disounts / partners / third party ads' \- some of them are helpful / wanted.

when a plugin hijacks your next screen, like wp-statistics does after an update sometimes (others too, eg all-in-one-seo sometimes )- I hate that even more than what this yoast ad did.

</comment><comment><USER29> Did this happen on their GPL version, or their "premium" version, or both?

<comment><USER30> GPL version it seems:

[https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress- seo/issues/13961](https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/issues/13961)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I noticed that! Actually pushed me to remove it from my site...

</comment><comment><USER32> You have come the very thing you swore to destroy.

</comment><comment><USER33> i haven't used wp in a long time. does it come with permission settings for plugins now?

<comment><USER20> The plugin exists to inject seo-relevant tags into your page, so I don't see how a permission system would help to prevent them from injecting _other_ tags into your page.

And no, there's no real capability system for plugins in Wordpress. Plugins can define their own _user_ permissions that hooks into WP's system to determine what user can use what feature, but that's entirely opt in on the plugins' part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Innocence once lost can never be regained.</comment>


Reversing Sinclair's amazing 1974 calculator hack - half the ROM of the HP-35 - <AUTHOR> http://files.righto.com/calculator/sinclair_scientific_simulator.html <comment><USER2> This is great.

 _Scientific calculators usually provide constants such as e and π but there was no space in the ROM for these constants. The Sinclair Scientific used the brilliant solution of printing the constants on the calculator 's case_

<comment><USER3> That's gotta be the hackiest hack ever - write it on the outside. Genius.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am not sure what is more amazing, the original creation or the cleverness of the person who figured out everything they did.

I guess the original creation but wow, now that is a dedicated hobbyist.

 _The Visual 6502 group enjoys dissolving old chips in acid, photographing the die, and reverse-engineering them._

Wow!

<comment><USER5> _The Visual 6502 group enjoys dissolving old chips in acid, photographing the die, and reverse-engineering them._

Unfortunately (or not, depending on your perspective) it's not just the Visual 6502 group that enjoys that. Any leading chip in the marketplace these days is almost immediately reverse engineered in this way. I haven't been in the chip business for a few years but I recall a company which offered this as a complete service - they'd send you detailed circuit schematics and so forth.

<comment><USER6> FlyLogic used to do some awesome teardowns too: [http://www.flylogic.net/blog/](http://www.flylogic.net/blog/)

If you go back through their blog posts, they have some cool techniques for bypassing "security" metal meshes to read out the secure FLASH/ROM sections of chips.

IIRC, one of the guys behind FlyLogic was involved in the high-profile reverse engineering of satellite receivers (ie. satellite pirating).

<comment><USER7> Zac Franken and Adam Laurie are doing this kind of stuff and making tools for hobbyists ([http://zacsblog.aperturelabs.com/2013/02/diy-decapping- machi...](http://zacsblog.aperturelabs.com/2013/02/diy-decapping-machine- decapinator-part-1.html))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8>
      Unfortunately, as calculator prices collapsed, so did Sinclair Radionics' profits,
      and the company was broken up in 1979 after heavy losses.

He fought Moore's law, and the law won.

But this whole thing reminds me of Woz's work in the first Apples. Why wasn't his genius work similarly wiped out? Soon after the Apple, there were dozens - hundreds - of new personal computer manufacturers.

I think it's software. The value of a platform is what you can do with it. Software increases what you can do, therefore increases the value of the platform. There's increasing returns, so once it gets started, it gets harder and harder to stop.

Branding is also important (Jobs), which is why the Apple eventually fell to the "PC" \- because the strongest computer brand in the world for decades was IBM.

<comment><USER4> Apple fell to the PC because the hardware was a fraction of the price since clones were allowed to exist in the PC world.

Apple sued their clones out of existence. Might all be using Apple today if they had not.

Then they eventually switched to pc hardware themselves.

<comment><USER9> Apple seems to be still around. You can google it to check. Apple's problem with PC was initially simply that IBM sold the PC. For many years PCs were more or comparably expensive and much less useful than Macs, but sold because they were backed by IBM. And Apple did very well despite its lower market share until John Sculley started listening to pundits and lowered prices in the early 90s. Even so that worked Ok until Spindler listened to more pundits and started allowing clones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While clever and inexpensive, the low speed and low accuracy of this device made it unusable. It was billed as "3-figure accuracy", but in fact it only got that on some cases. A bright undergrad or grad student could quickly uncover _useful_ problems that it flat out couldn't solve.

In short, it was a toy. Anyone basing one's academic grade on this thing was a fool. You really _did_ have to spend the money for an HP-35, or the later Texas Instruments SR-5x calculators that were less expensive.

</comment><comment><USER11> The bit that is probably most striking to modern eyes is the data representation. With 320 instructions there's simply no room for the "obvious" code to translate to and from a display representation. So everything was stored in BCD and operated on one (decimal!) digit at a time using a 4-bit ALU.

<comment><USER12> I was under the impression that BCD was commonly used in calculators. I know that my HP 48 used BCD and was able to address 4 bit nibbles.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right that BCD is very common for calculators. BCD was also commonly used in microcomputers, since you save all the binary-to-ASCII code for I/O. This is why x86 has a bunch of BCD instructions like AAA (ASCII adjust after addition), which was important enough to be a single-byte opcode.

The 6502 is notable for its highly-efficient and patented ([https://www.google.com/patents/US3991307](https://www.google.com/patents/US3991307)) decimal arithmetic mode. I'll write up its interesting circuits sometime. One consequence of the patent is the processor in the NES video game is a 6502 clone that lacks decimal mode.

<comment><USER13> I had thought the 2A03 didn't have BCD to save silicon-- but apparently they just crudely disabled it by removing 5 transistors[1]! Would Ricoh's second- source 6502 license have been more expensive if they included BCD?

[1] [http://www.visual6502.org/wiki/index.php?title=6502DecimalMo...](http://www.visual6502.org/wiki/index.php?title=6502DecimalMode#Decimal_mode_and_the_NES.27_RP2A03G)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _" You might be surprised to learn that the calculator chip cannot perform multiplication natively. There's no floating point unit to multiply two numbers._"

Quite true. The sexy multiplier chips from TRW ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRW_Inc](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRW_Inc). ) were still a few years off, and not intended for mere calculators. Same for the Intel x87 floating point co-processors ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8087](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8087)).

Nowadays the silicon real-estate cost for floating point math is trivial, and chip area is filled out with RAM cache for lack of anything better to do ...

</comment><comment><USER15> Nicely done, especially compared to the fits that HP went through trying to figure out how they could prove or disprove that all 11 digits of their calculation were correct.

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't call them "fits", really.

40 years ago these calculators were looked upon with a bit of skepticism. Engineers that were used to seeing the log tables with their own eyes and hand-manipulating slide rules were being asked to _trust_ the results coming out of these calculators.

And lives depended on it, really. If you were a civil engineer designing a bridge and you needed to be _absolutely sure_ the numbers you were using were accurate to 7 places and totally correct, would you suddenly put all your faith in this small brown box with no way to examine the inner workings?

HP went through a lot to build that trust and it was rightly earned. HP's reputation for building solid accurate calculators kept that business going for decades to come.

<comment><USER17> Trusting the numbers coming out of a calculator was ALWAYS a bad idea, especially if lives depended on it. It wasn't just the calculator making a mistake - you could have made a mistake keying in the numbers.

This is dealt with by:

1\. running the results through the inverse equations to verify that you get the inputs back again

2\. calculating the results using an independent method to verify them

3\. having a different group of people independently check your numbers

4\. have your results pass a "reasonableness" test, i.e. do they make sense

5\. put the resulting design on a test rig and verify the numbers experimentally

How do I know this? I worked on critical flight control systems for Boeing.

Any engineer who just punches numbers into a calculator and bets lives on the results ought to be fired.

<comment><USER18> These days, we can also have our calculators keep track of the units associated with a quantity, which helps greatly with sanity-checking. If the units come out wrong or mis-match anywhere in the calculation, you'll know immediately.

<comment><USER17> It's nice to have extra checks, but that changes nothing about what I said. If you are making designs that lives depend on, it is not HP's responsibility, it is YOURS and you should be using the techniques I outlined.

I'm sorry to be so blunt about this, but I feel strongly about it. I too often run into engineers that either argue that they can design a perfect system that is not subject to human error, or they try to shift responsibility onto other people or organizations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I owned Sinclair's programmable scientific calculator from a few years later which was similarly "interesting". It had 36 program steps (vs. 72 for the HP65 iirc), so storage system, and only one memory. Each constant in a program counted as N+1 steps where N was the number of button presses were needed. So it taught me about multiply re-entrant code.

I also owned a Sinclair ZX-80 (aka Timex) computer, later upgraded to a ZX-81 ROM with 16kB of memory.

Overall, Sinclair's problem seems to have been going a little too far in the "worse is better" direction with every product.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you need to explain this too less geeky friends then telling them that this amount of storage is less than a single letter on a modern display. Which on a 32bit display at 12x12 you would be on 576 bytes (8 bits) and this is compared to a 320 11 bit word (320x11/8=440) 440 bytes.

This makes chess on a 1k zx81 including display seem like bloat-ware now :).

Nowadays we have more storage on the keyboard controller chips, heck the older ones during the 90's had 4 KB storage, so almost 10x more ROM alone to work with - for a keyboard.

<comment><USER20> Given that Sprite managed to get Linux booting on a hard disks processor [0], I'm increasingly aware that the embedded device we use are overpowered. Makes for some interesitng hacking though, I bet you could run a webserver on my washing machine.

[0]: [http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack](http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So is 'reversing' a common lazy shorthand for 'reverse engineering'? The title confused me until I realized what it was about. Feeling like an old fart...

<comment><AUTHOR> Simple explanation - there wasn't room to fit "reverse engineering" into an 80-character title.

<comment><USER22> Very apt, considering the topic.

Tho in 1974 Sinclair could've fit it in a 37-char title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really wish someone would make a modern scientific calculator - Imagine what would be possible on a modern ARM processor. Even the new HP calculators use old ~70mhz ARM processors emulating the even older saturn HP48 code...

You could build it on top of Android, and have the software be open-source while making money from selling the hardware (so you could run it on a touchscreen, but if you wanted a keyboard you'd buy the calculator).

<comment><USER24> There are modern calculators: Mathematica, Matlab, and the most used: Excel

For tasks that need to be done away from a computer sure a calculator is handy but that has rather dwindled down to basic calculations. Schoolwork sure calculators are great but I never needed more than my HP-48 and when I did it was usually an assignment meant more for MATLAB/Mathematica.

Now for your point of building it on top of android, what I want is not another device but I want a new calculator built for android. Everyone has a smartphone these days why should I have to buy a calculator when I have a strong computer in my pocket. We just need an interface for smartphones and the appropriately strong (Programmable) back end.

This looks nice but I don't have an iPhone [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nd1/id368497993?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nd1/id368497993?mt=8)

<comment><USER25> Calca is also a nice take on the "modern calculator"

[http://calca.io/](http://calca.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What's more interesting than how the calculator works is how Sinclair was able to write the code for such a chip, which the article doesn't attempt to guess at. I wonder if he used some kind of boostrap on paper, looking at the algorithms.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know about the Sinclair development specifically, but for the HP-35, they wrote a register-level simulator in software that let them develop the algorithms and single-step through for debugging. My favorite quote from the article: "Correcting a problem was a simple matter of changing a punched card or two."

[http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1972-06.pdf](http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1972-06.pdf)

The article goes into a lot of detail on the HP-35 internals, so it's worth a look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> 80085

thats my calculator hack

</comment><comment><USER3> Reverse Polish Notation - sounds like the punch line to a really bad math joke

<comment><USER22> After I got used to RPN (I had a lovely old HP-21) I found it much more intuitive. Stack-based thinking. No parentheses! (And I've used LISP for years, but that's entirely different.)

RPN vs Infix/Algebraic used to be a holy-war topic. Like emacs vs vi, or iPhone vs Android.

Once you go RPN, you can never go back again.

<comment><USER28> The one issue I've already had with RPN is that you require a separator between numbers anyways - in RPN it's too easy to parse "23 4 +" as "2 34 +", for example, especially if you're writing quickly.

<comment><USER29> Might have been better to demonstrate that using subtraction as addition is commutative and thus either one works fine in this case.

<comment><USER30> One is 27; the other is 36.

<comment><USER29> LOL, apparently I suck as a parser. I read them as just swaps of the numbers, I.E. 23 4 + vs. 4 23 +.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are the insides of Airbnb listings being commercialized? - <AUTHOR>

I recently stayed with Airbnb and had a fun conversation with the host regarding his past experiences. Does anyone know, or has anyone seen listings being used to promote products or services?
I guess the examples would be product placement, bathroom samples, posters, painted wall murals, magnets of real estate agents, fashion, etc.
I love Airbnb but my gut says this is inevitable and I'm curious if anyone has seen this happening yet... <comment><USER2> Related: I had a Lyft ride recently where the driver the entire ride was trying to sell me health and life insurance. And he had clearly done this before and it was all part of his ride. He had a stack of cards right there on his dash ready with his pitch.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure this is against the terms of service for drivers. I recently asked a Lyft driver about in car ads that's what he told me. The reason we were talking about it was because he had his car wrapped with a Desk.com ad. He said he got $100 to put it on until the campaign expires.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, and if it's not, it should be. It was a very uncomfortable ride. I take Lyft because it's so much friendlier and cleaner than cabs, but that ride had the opposite effect.

On another tangent though, being a Lyft driver might be be a great place for some folks trying to get consumer feedback on startup ideas. I was approached by three guys yesterday in front of a cafe asking if they could ask me 3 questions about a lean startup idea. Unfortunately my wife and I were on a walk with our newborn, and trying just to get home before another newborn eruption.

But that car ride would be a great place to engage in conversation about startup ideas and problems the passengers experience without making it a sales pitch.

<comment><USER4> Where do you live? Both these scenarios sound like cringeworthy scenes from Silicon Valley (the HBO version).

<comment><USER2> Chicago. :) The Lyft scenario was definitely cringeworthy. The lean startup questions outside the cafe weren't. I think it was good hustle and effort. They weren't pushy at all and handled "no, need to get baby back home" very well. They could probably change a few things to get a better reply rate on the street, and I wanted to help, it was just bad timing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was messaged by a local business owner, asking if I'd be interested in putting his product in my listing photos, mentioning the business in the listing, and also in my "welcome to the apartment" notes for visitors.

Next time I was in his shop I told him I really don't rent the place out enough for it to be worthwhile, but asked him how the response from other people he messaged was. He said one woman was really angry in her message back, and a few others took him up on the offer. To be honest the ROI for him wouldn't be great, especially given many of the customers from AirBnB won't be returning.

If it is against AirBnB's terms and they take issue with it I can only imagine the irony-laden field day the media would have.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is actually an interesting idea and not necessarily bad for the experience. If a place had certain demographics Sony or Microsoft could offer a free new console around/before release. Special feature for host to offer, bonus for guest, seems like a solid path to a sale for the company. It seems that could possibly work for other things too, and it'd surely be more interesting to advertisers than a typical hotel.

I guess the big thing is visitors probably aren't returning so local businesses aren't going to get much success- but I can see interesting opportunities for less location constrained companies. What if Netflix gave a free account to a chunk of places with certain demographics?

</comment><comment><USER7> Not direct promotion for products or services, but I rented an apt once from a luxury real estate developer. He told about some of the projects he was working on. Pretty impressive. We've actually become good friends.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess if someone had experience, or was trained well, they could potentially be selling without coming across as selling. Like you rent from a real estate agent and he's sort of running through the typical questions in a conversational manner...

For instance, I just stayed with someone who manages music events and does promotion for bands. If I needed someone for those services in that area, that's my go-to guy because he came off knowledgeable and friendly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is a good example: [https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/72229](https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/72229)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, well that's blatant. I was thinking more of things like listings that had products conveniently placed or highlighted in the photos/description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >has anyone seen listings being used to promote products or services?

Yes . For prostitution. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/14/prostitutes- renting...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/14/prostitutes-renting- airbnb-apartments_n_5147910.html)</comment>


Apple's App Store fees are 'highway robbery' – House antitrust committee chair - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21295778/apple-app-store-hey-email-fees-policies-antitrust-wwdc-2020 <comment><USER2> I don't think the pressure on Apple is going to let up. Smart phones are no longer a tech toy and have become a literal part of government and commercial infrastructure. Apple's arbitrary power over the platform is pissing off and embarrassing governments in the COVID era.

During COVID, governments around the world have been making major decisions based on mobility data from Apple and Google which shows trends of where people are visiting and what mode of transit they are using. The real-time mobility data from Apple and Google is far better than anything the government has itself. This is a big wake-up call to the governments that they have been basically supplanted by private companies. I'm sure no president or prime minister likes having to give a press conference where they have to say "According to Apple, we see good compliance with government regulations...."

Yesterday, the UK announced it was abandoning its own COVID contract tracing app and moving to the Apple model because they couldn't figure out how to make iPhones wake up via bluetooth (because that's a private API only available to Apple). A major western government is facing huge public embarrassment in a public health crisis over what comes down to not having permission from Apple to use a specific API in an app. That's the kind of thing that pisses off politicians, regardless of whether or not you think the UK followed the best technical path.

Combine all that with Apple now forcing companies to adopt their sign-in systems and payment methods in order to reach what is now part of the public infrastructure and Apple has created a situation where they've managed to piss off everyone across the political spectrum, from the hard-core free market people to the leftist public good people.

<comment><USER3> >> Yesterday, the UK announced it was abandoning its own COVID contract tracing app and moving to the Apple model because they couldn't figure out how to make iPhones wake up via bluetooth (because that's a private API only available to Apple). A major western government is facing huge public embarrassment in a public health crisis over what comes down to not having permission from Apple to use a specific API in an app.

I would not take the government at its word here. Their entire contact tracing program has been a shambles. They contracted the work out to their friends, put the ex-CEO of one of the countries worst ISP's in charge and wasted months trying to hack together their own soution that was never going to work in the first place. If it was really an Apple issue they could go ahead and release their Android app.

<comment><USER4> Making an iPhone do work in the background is fairly non-trivial, and not launching for that platform is suicide for a contract tracing app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apple wants to own iPhone consumers so that anyone who wants access to that demographic must pay the toll and follow their rules. It's far too much power for one corporation. Nice to see authorities are starting to take the matter seriously.

<comment><USER6> That's fine, but how are you going to construct legislation that specifically targets Apple's walled garden without breaching the Fourteenth Amendment?

<comment><USER7> Genuinely curious. I was under the impression that Constitution applies to people, and the govt. I'd appreciate if you point to any references for Constitution being applied to corporations.

<comment><USER8> Corporations have had personhood for a while, it's why they also have free speech protection and stuff. 14th amendment protection specifically was decided in 1886 ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southe...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co.))

<comment><USER6> Correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I believe Apple just don't see any reason to be nice. And probably that's what many companies would do if they were in that position.

We know that we can't stay dominant forever,

We know someone will force us to reduce Apple-tax later,

So we have to get as much as we can, for as long as we can.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you could choose between a fee decrease to 15% _or_ the ability to sideload apps bypassing the store, which is more important? To me, the _only_ reason I avoid iOS is specifically because I cannot install my own apps without using the store.

<comment><USER11> I think capping fees would make it even worse, it would entrench the practice as acceptable.

Allow sideloading and the price should move towards the equilibrium price. Which very well might be 30%, since Google manages this despite allowing sideloading.

The tricky question I would say is the accessibility of the alternative stores. First there is the default/non-default install thing, we've seen how it worked out for Microsoft. Then there are all the warnings/toggles about unsafe external apps. This is much more difficult, since it's quite useful for security, but at the same time it makes it much harder for alternative stores/apps.

<comment><USER10> Visa and MasterCard charge somewhere between 1-3% (depends who you are and the details of the purchase). PayPal charge around 5%. Some two-way marketplaces charge upwards of 40%.

I think Apple is providing more value than PayPal, but less value than a two- way marketplace.

For me, 30% is extortionate and predatory. 5% is too low for the value they provide. 15% is quite high, but it can be justified given the value adds (advertising, content delivery, reviews, last resort QA, security etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Imagine if Credit card processing companies took 30%. I mean it's a little more than that being a marketplace too, so maybe since Stripe takes 2-3%, apple could take 5-8% that would seem more 'reasonable'. IMHO.

<comment><USER13> That would work if apple force eCommerce companies that has an app in app store to sell through apple payment system and give a cut of 2-3% to apple

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of the things I never understood is why Apple doesn't have _tiers_ of pricing and support.

Why not "5% for app-upload capability and a plain store page with nothing else", up to "30% for lots of nice bells and whistles" or even "50% for regular featuring to potential customers"?

People would not complain about 30% nearly as much if there were any alternative. (And they are right to complain about how little 30% gets them currently.)

</comment><comment><USER15> Apple has over 50% marketshare in the U.S. in the mobile market, so by marketshare they have a case for a monopoly.

So for 150 million people Apple are the Gatekeepers, you have to pay the Troll it's fee or it won't let you past.

And people here are saying if you don't like Apple, don't make apps for iOS? Please try to do a business project in a market where you ignore 50% of the market and let me know how you fair out :)

Jason Freid of BaseCamp gave a good argument: If you are handling the search, marketing and production of the app by yourself, why do you STILL need to pay the 30% tax? Imagine paying AWS 30% of your revenue just for hosting privileges :)

And don't forget that even IF you try to make the argument for hosting, they are hosting the app on Apple Store because Apple doesn't allow ANOTHER way of downloading an app. This is a really important fact. Imagine if you used Windows and you couldn't download programs except over Windows Store. Just try to imagine Windows not allowing Steam to distribute over the web...

</comment><comment><USER16> Anyone who cares about this issue, just upvote, don't comment. HN's algorithm downranks posts where the comment to upvote ratio is too high.

<comment><USER17> Yeah and there is a reason for that and it's working well to be honest.

Gaming the system is never good option.

<comment><USER16> Maybe they should change the algorithm then. There is an important discussion going on and the dumb algorithm thinks its better to just brush it away and kick the can down the road.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps this is apophenia, but it appears that societal tensions are boiling over from all corners, against all kinds of established authorities, no?

<comment><USER19> This is the expected outcome from introspection (Corona period).

<comment><USER20> astrologers will have a different interpretation ;)

<comment><USER21> Eclipse + Solstice in 48h

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Generally only gaming companies can afford to pay or money losing vc companies. Let me just state generally again, most other companies just don't sell via IAP as it's too expensive. I've been saying this here for months and Google is guilty too 100%. These two control discoverability (search and ads), hosting (all data to copy your app), and monetization (charge tax on any profit you make). Why? Because they can and are evil. Doesn't leave room for new consumer startups anymore and increases prices for consumers.

</comment><comment><USER23> As much as I agree with the stance against I hate the coverage and the press this is getting with people evangelicizing the CEO. He's regularly referenced on this site by his initials (which even as a regular reader of tech news I had to look up) which comes across as cult of personality at best and astroturfing at worse.

<comment><USER24> He actually is a kind of cult personality in the tech world because he wrote Ruby on Rails (which itself was kind of contrarian to most other things in that space), and it's the foundation lots of web software startups are build on. There would be no Twitter or Github without him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the US Government wants to place limits on certain fees, they should pass a law limiting such fees.

Meanwhile, it's a bit hypocritical for the US Government to accuse private corporations of 'highway robbery' when they themselves are committing (or failing to outlaw) literal highway robbery in the form of civil forfeiture.

<comment><USER25> > Meanwhile, it's a bit hypocritical for the US Government to accuse private > corporations of 'highway robbery' when they themselves are committing (or > failing to outlaw) literal highway robbery in the form of civil forfeiture.

Indeed it is. So they should address both, not use the current existence of one to excuse the other.

<comment><USER6> To be clear, I wasn't saying that one excused the other. I was only commenting on the congressperson's poor choice of words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> help me understand. why such big fuss for such a small platform? isn't google's android much much bigger? if apple's app store is still the place to be due to profits made on the platform then apple is doing something right, no? if they stopped would the app store still be the place for apps?

p.s. haven't installed an app in over a year. i have no interest in mobile apps whatsoever.

<comment><USER27> The market share of the iPhone in the US is around 50%

<comment><USER28> Yes, and the next largest phone maker's market share is Samsung at 20-25%. Android doesn't make phones. Google makes some phones but their market share is tiny.

<comment><USER26> ah, this is an interesting point. thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Perhaps it is a matter of my preestablished cynicisms but this seems like a campaign contribution shakedown/stupid election year publicity stunt where they rail against a big bad company for complete bullshit reasons. I don't get why people go with the Apple locked down system personally but they aren't even a majority of the market nor a plurality.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the House gives a shit about interoperability given the DMCA and lack of right to repair laws.

<comment><USER30> Google isn't much better. I suspect the government is going to force both of them to open their app store with anti-trust suits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Apple may be robbers, but they're not trolling a public highway, they're demanding fees if you want to drive on the highway that they built. Build a better ecosystem around better devices, better software, better marketing, and better services, and you can also charge whatever you want, or make it free. That is competition. Wanting to drive on someone else's walled highway (which leads directly to eyeballs and open wallets) and also refusing to pay their fee is not competition.

<comment><USER32> So are we establishing that if you want to create a paid email service with a custom app without wanting to pay 30% of your revenue to Apple, you need to create a competing mobile ecosystem that can rival that of Apple's ($260 billion yearly revenue) and Google's ($162 billion yearly revenue)?

How is this beneficial for innovation and for consumers?

<comment><USER31> What's beneficial for consumers is the fact that the Apple ecosystem exists at all. People pay because it's a good experience. Everyone is welcome to create good end-user experiences with open technologies like PWA, and distribute however they wish. It's strange to me to say on the one hand "we could not survive without the iOS customer pool, we _need_ to make a native app because it's the greatest experience, but we don't want to pay the platform that makes it all possible".

<comment><USER32> > _Everyone is welcome to create good end-user experiences with open > technologies like PWA_

Everyone who isn't targetting Apple devices that is.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that it is not possible to publish an application on the Apple App Store without paying. Period end.

I also don't see why there's an expectation that Hey has to pay Apple for providing the app. They are trying to bring out an app to allow their customers on Apple devices to be able to use their service. It's not like they're just putting their app there for marketing because the App Store is absolutely horrible at any kind of marketing.

This is a bit like expecting Netflix to pay Comcast, AT&T and every other ISP for the priviledge of using their networks. Netflix's customers are already paying those companies just like how Hey's customers are paying for their Apple devices.

<comment><USER6> > I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that it is not > possible to publish an application on the Apple App Store without paying. > Period end.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that the same is true for games on the Xbox, PlayStation and nearly every mainstream games console for the past thirty years. Pretty much every games console software title included a healthy cut for Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, or Sony. And if you didn't have the explicit blessing of these companies, you couldn't publish your games at all. Period end.

Where was your outrage then?

<comment><USER32> > _Where was your outrage then?_

Where was the game publishers' outrage? Where was the game developers' outrage?

Gaming console makers and game developers have way better relations than Apple and the people developing for the App Store. And the game console makers' cut isn't just pure greed. Sony took an estimate loss of $240-$300 on every PS3 sold at launch just in order to widen out the install base.

<comment><USER6> > Where was the game publishers' outrage?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade)

> Gaming console makers and game developers have way better relations

Let's set aside the unproven assumptions; so your logic is that if you're a nice platform monopolist, you can charge arbitrary platform access fees. But if you're a bunch of meanies, different laws shall apply to you. I'm sorry, I was under the misapprehension that you were making a serious point.

> Sony took an estimate loss of $240-$300 on every PS3

Now I know you're not being serious. Such behaviours are anti-competitive as it would be exceedingly difficult for a new market entrant to compete with such artificially low console prices. What you're saying is that the US Government should enact laws which favour dumping and loss-leader activity. Ridiculous.

<comment><USER18> > Let's set aside the unproven assumptions; so your logic is that if you're a > nice platform monopolist, you can charge arbitrary platform access fees. But > if you're a bunch of meanies, different laws shall apply to you. I'm sorry, > I was under the misapprehension that you were making a serious point.

You're not entirely wrong:

[https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report- steams-30-cut...](https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report- steams-30-cut-is-actually-the-industry-standard)

> One source explained that although Steam only takes 30%, other fees and > deductions mean they are usually collecting closer to 65% on their end, > while they say console sales return much closer to the full 70% but are > stingier with refunds and the like.

> Another source also stressed that just because a retailer takes 30% doesn't > mean the developer of the game actually gets the other 70%, saying > publishers often earn between 30-70% of a sale themselves depending on the > deal that has been struck. There are also engine licensing fees to consider > (games that use Unreal have its 5% fee waived if they are sold on the Epic > Store), taxes, and other costs not factored into what many people assume the > actual creator of a game earns. One source said their takeaway from a > physical retailer at the end of the day is often between just 10-15%.

You know, maybe this doesn't have to end with Apple. The Google Play store charges a 30% service fee as well. Maybe the entire pricing system of the industry is fucked, and worth further scrutiny. Furthermore, it's been repeatedly brought up in the discourse over the publishing industry's recent lawsuit against Internet Archive that the industry standard for book publishing are contracts where the publishers pocket 75% of book sales, while the author retain the rest. Meanwhile, you hear horror stories out of the music industry where artists are paid a pittance. This can be an endemic problem that's afflicting multiple industries at once. Maybe we can confer our righteous indignation both at Apple, and the rest. And maybe we ought to figure out a better way to help creators, whether app developers, game developers, authors, or musicians, get the pay they're due.

<comment><USER6> FWIW, I completely agree with everything you wrote. I'm not opposed to new laws that set a limit on platform access fees—but such laws can't be targeted at Apple exclusively. They have to be applied to any company which charges fees for access to an exclusive market.

<comment><USER18> Certainly, but maybe this public outcry and exposure from an antitrust investigation will educate people about the structural problems in this industry and lead to greater change that will apply to more companies than just Apple.

<comment><USER6> I'm totally cool with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why should I pay $99 per year for a hey.com email address? Robbery! I demand the courts lower this to 9¢ immediately, which I deem to be the true value of an email address. Hey are abusing their monopoly power over the hey.com domain...this will not stand! Burn it to the ground! Write to your congressman! I'll spend my millions fighting this! Over my dead body!

I'll chase them round the moons of Nibea and round Antares Maelstrom and round perdition's flames before I pay $99 for a fucking email address!

* I'm available for podcast interviews to promote my wares for a very reasonable fee. Hating hey.com is optional. No purchase necessary. Other email providers are available.

<comment><USER30> The rules change when a company has a near-monopoly and practices anti- competitive tactics to nerf their competition.

That's why we have anti-trust laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> >It's crushing small developers who simply can't survive with those kinds of payments.

Oh I don't know. The "small developers who can't survive" he's talking to here have multiple hypercars and I don't think they are small or facing survival challenges.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagani_Zonda#HH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagani_Zonda#HH)

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

Sure there are smaller developers. But the sense of entitlement is a bit much. Once you've written some software, that does not mean you are entitled to have people pay for your life from here on out.

I mean you have developers who have written software once, do not maintain it, and would charge subscription fees if they could, for software they don't update. There is a spectrum of behaviors, and there is a cost for running a store to corral all those behaviors into some order that average consumers can deal with. And then there are even legal bills to pay, for fighting off people who own hypercars and feel wronged.

There could be some room for the fees to come down now that the App Store is well established. But it's not quite how it's being portrayed… highway robbery? Way too dramatic.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you conduct take home coding exercises? - <AUTHOR> What is your process?
Do you have a plan for reviewing getting results you'd like to see?
How much of what you ask a candidate to work on is well thought out? <comment><USER2> I quite like tests which are really open ended. If you get too specific, you can have 3 outcomes: they did it right, they did it wrong, you did it wrong. It seems like only the last one can lead to an interesting discussion in most cases. And if the problem is known, you may get a googled answer instead of real work.

I've seen a few open tests work well, but the one I created was (DevOps skills): Read rows from CSV, write them to database, print how many were written (in any language) - treat it as production quality app and impress us.

You can learn so much about people's approach and experience from this. Do they do documentation, do they handle non-us-ascii characters, do they handle errors (and how), do they create package ready for deployment, do they care about resource usage, and loads more.

The review was pretty much: are we impressed with the quality, thought put into it. We tried to assign some points to specific things, but quite often either we got impressed by something unexpected, or choice came down to the subjective quality.

</comment><comment><USER3> Keep in mind that for some take-home is a very big no.

I mean, if I attend a full day of interviews on site, after 4-5 phone interviews, asking me to code over the weekend after all that will just make me wonder what's wrong with the company.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your passwords? - <AUTHOR>

With all this heartbleed noise, it now seems like the right time to finally get my passwords in order. So I was wondering what solution do you guys use manage your passwords, SSH keys and misc credentials ? <comment><USER2> I previously used KeePass and the password database corrupted one day. I would only use KeePass if you are comfortably keeping several backups using TrueCrypt and your system is compatible with it.

I prefer LastPass because it has more features that are valuable (I can use one tool/service instead of several), I can use it on all of my devices, it is very secure.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have followed the same process as mentioned by @2810. Worth mentioning something I wrote last year - [http://pivotedreality.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/i-dont- like-c...](http://pivotedreality.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/i-dont-like- changing-passwords/)

</comment><comment><USER4> For credentials like facebook, emails, coinbase and etc, my password will be [identifier]_mypassword. So for example, my fb password will be facebook_yyu9023, email password will be gmail_yyu9023 and the patterns continue. Now days I just write it down and then encrypt it with a passphrase.

<comment><USER5> I tried the identifier route before, but there's always a few smart aleks who detect and refuse dictionary words, maybe even the domain name (can't remember exactly). These types of "systems" that live in your head, would be the best way to go if it weren't for banking, financial institutions, and government run websites.

With that being said I use LastPass for the high priority stuff and 1 basic password for sites I could care less about. Never lost one of those basic accounts yet.

<comment><USER6> I use a variation of the identifier route which is to take the identifier and drop all the vowels from it. So not only do I get something that is easy to recreate it's also not in the dictionary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> KeePassX because I'm a cheapskate. Works pretty well, as long as you're ok with syncing the password database on a public syncing service that shall not be named.

</comment><comment><USER8> 1Password

<comment><USER9> ...which is 50% off at the moment [https://agilebits.com/store](https://agilebits.com/store)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> keepass/keepassx with the database syncd through the non-controversial syncing service du jour.

</comment><comment><USER11> LastPass is sufficient for myself

<comment><USER12> I love their password vault security audits, I've been de-duping and increasing my password security with the help of this.

Lastpass Mobile now also has autofill on Chrome if you are using Android, which is great because the inbuilt browser on the Lastpass App was awful.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks all for the suggestions, just switched all my passwords with Keepass + sync

</comment><comment><USER13> Keepass and DropBox. The encrypted password database lives in Dropbox, and the key file lives on each of my client devices. The master password lives in my head.</comment>


Inbox by Gmail: now in more places - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2015/02/inbox-by-gmail-now-in-more-places.html <comment><USER2> This is the best way to manage your mail ever. I get a good amount of mail everyday, I use Inbox since day 1, and this is just too good. I can quickly scan a tag/inbox, and if I doesn't see anything relevant, just click on done, goodbye. See something you wants to do later? Just pin it. It'll stay on top. Everyone should give it a try. The product is very well done, and if you care enough about your mail to try new things on your workflow, just use it, you'll never come back.

<comment><USER3> Completely agree. I wrote a blog post about it a while back [0], but to me the killer feature is being able to pin items as to-dos (or create new todo's unassociated with an email), and then flip the switch so that you ONLY see these pinned items.

I love it because I can only look at my pinned items and focus on knocking a few out at a time, and only occasionally flipping back to the regular inbox view. (Which I find distracting when I need to focus.)

[0] - [http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2014/12/02/the-super- magic-p...](http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2014/12/02/the-super-magic- productivity-button-in-the-new-google-inbox/)

<comment><USER4> I have been using the star/archive/spam method for a long time now in regular gmail. The inbox interface seems to slow down my flow, as it has little inbetween steps I find irrelevant.

I zip through my email in gmail using keybindings, se/e/! respectively with gmail set to go to next message automatically. Takes me a few seconds to go through about 20 emails, then I circle back to the ones I starred.

Inbox looks better, but feels a bit worse for me. Also, the no apps support as always is a downer, but us apps users are used to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It still strikes me how Google Apps users, who actually pay for GMail & Co., are always the last ones to get the new stuff.

<comment><USER6> Well they test it on the free users, and give the Apps users a more stable version later.

<comment><USER7> Some things have just never arrived for paying customers. Such as Google Now for Apps users, which would make more sense for things like travel reminders as most of my travel is business related.

<comment><USER8> Google Now works for Apps users. It just has a limited feature set from what I gather, which is even weirder.

<comment><USER9> Why is it weird? You can't simply mine the private data of paying customers which is needed for Google Now.

<comment><USER8> Why not? They could just make it opt-in through the admin console like almost everything else that companies might not need/want (Youtube, G+).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still prefer Priority Inbox that's been around a few years now. I gave Inbox a shot, and it's very pretty, but I ultimately didn't find it as useful. Maybe I need to find the right settings to get Inbox to work the way I want, but... I'd be just as happy to not do that and stick with Priority Inbox.

What I like about Priority Inbox is that it shows me important emails, regardless of the type ("type" meaning the different categories that Inbox has). I.e., I don't generally care about "Promos" or "Updates," but there are a select few within them that I _do_ care about. Priority Inbox figures that out, and promotes those particular ones. Inbox just groups them all together, so to see the one "Update" that I care about, I'd have to sift through that whole category to see it.

Gmail occasionally tries to convince me to switch to Inbox. I hope it's not the case that we'll all eventually be forced to switch...

<comment><USER11> Agree completely with this. I love the "mark and sweep" aspect of Inbox, but after a couple of months with it, I think I have to go back to the old interface.

Inbox with a "Priority" bundle would be perfect.

<comment><USER10> What's weird is that if you try to create a label called "Important" in Inbox, it will say it already exists. Yet it doesn't show that label as an option when creating bundles. It's like they went out of their way to prevent you from doing exactly what you're suggesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Glad to see Safari and Firefox are now supported! The whole "Chrome only" thing was a bit of an initial disappointment.

</comment><comment><USER13> I tried Inbox when it first started and I can say I pretty much hate it. It seems like it is a change just for changes sake. It doesn't seem to make me more productive in my inbox, only more frustrated that I can't seem to find the things I want. Everything seems jumbled and just is a mess. If they make it the default I can see myself actually going back to a desktop client and using something else for a mobile client.

<comment><USER14> I had the opposite experience. I managed to go through my entire 5 years worth of old emails and get down to inbox zero.

I love the snooze and pin features. The Android app is awesome. Swip to archive is such a nice way to deal with email, which (in my case) is 90% scan and bin. The web app isn't so awesome, mainly because of the lack of gestures.

Reminders added in Google Now show up in Inbox as well so I can be walking down the road and remember I need to do something tomorrow, and just add it to Google Now just by talking into my phone. 9 times out of ten I don't even have to spell correct the narrated text.

Inbox was the one single reason for me not dumping Gmail for Fastmail, which I was planning to do for privacy reasons.

<comment><USER15> I LOVED Inbox when it first came down, but earlier this week I switched back to gmail.

\- I love the snooze and remind me later feature, but I absolutely hate their touchpad/scroll support, I don't understand how mails get automatically marked done when I am just trying to read them.

\- The app is super heavy for my 2GB RAM Macbook Air(I have one for lightweight surfing at home), it slows down everything.

\- The 3 clicks I have to do in order to read a single mail eventually got to me. Take for instance, imagine if I got a new mail, how many clicks do I have to do in order to read it: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0tyqaualc7dpq7/Screenshot%202015-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/y0tyqaualc7dpq7/Screenshot%202015-02-19%2011.15.30.jpg?dl=0) Inbox's answer is 2 clicks, one for expanding the 'finance' section and second to open that mail. Isn't my intent obvious when I click on a folder that I wanna read that lone mail when I click on it? After clicking twice for 30 something mails a day, it got annoying.

\- Inbox doesn't scan my hangout messages whenever I use its search. I search my hangout messages a lot, that means I return back to gmail. I assume they will add this functionality in future.

\- The reply mess. If you are responding to an email, it has a decent inline responding ability, but the moment you stop responding or move away, you can't come back to the inline reply, you HAVE to edit that response outside of that experience. I see no reason why that should be the case.

\- My corporate gmail accounts don't support inbox, so it ends up me having a weird experience of constantly using gmail and inbox both

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really like the Inbox app. It's email workflow directly matches how I've managed my email for the longest time. That said, it's missing one big important feature for a lot of us power users: a unified inbox.

I get a lot of email through the day and I need to get through it quickly. I also have 4 active email accounts. Having to constantly juggle the UI to switch between these accounts is a productivity killer and annoyance.

I get it, some people don't want and/or need the unified inbox and it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. I'm not that person.

Dropbox's Mailbox app is a nice alternative (it's what I currently use). I feel the Inbox app is better constructed, but Mailbox has the features I need today and it works.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh, good. Now I can stop using the old interface in Firefox. That makes me happy; Inbox works with my brain a lot better.

<comment><USER18> Actually even before this announcement it worked fine in Firefox - you just had to change your user agent (or install one of the numerous extensions).

Google said it was because it was "slow" under Firefox, but since I never noticed a bug or any slowness on my two year old Macbook Air, it looked more like they just wanted to push Chrome to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like Inbox, but I need a trash can shortcut. I don't want to archive junk mail.

I guess it's only one extra click for the trash. Google apparently wants you to save everything.

<comment><USER20> I completely agree. I'd guess at least 50% of my email is deleted immediately after reading and not because it's unwanted, but because it holds no long-term value. Inbox assumes that all email is better archived than deleted which is simply not the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> When is it coming to the google apps? I recently switched my main email to the google apps and was excited for google inbox, but I still can not use it because it is disabled for us.

</comment><comment><USER22> I really like inbox, but the lack of a prominent delete button annoys me to no end.

Yes, I know I can bundle up mail and then delete the batch - but I want a one click way of deleting a message that I know I will never read again (promo emails for example)

<comment><USER23> You could use the keyboard shortcut, #

I notice they haven't made these configurable yet - I was hard-wired to press d!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I tried Inbox, really tried to love it, eventually switched back. It's something about how it sorts or arranges your mail in non-chronological order that really messes with my way of finding things. Also only being able to see 7 emails on the screen is a huge issue - if I get 20+ emails, I'm not able to glance through all of them to get a sense of how much work I have to do that day. The end result is that I felt very uncomfortable and insecure using it, even though my brain told me that I loved it (because of the nice fast UI).

<comment><USER25> And my Gmail experience improved substantially with the introduction of tabs (Primary, Social, Updates..) so I did the same as you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This headline really got my hopes up that this was finally the announcement of Inbox for Google Apps users...

</comment><comment><USER27> Tried Inbox for week and felt like it was introducing more clutter than less! Switched back to Mailbox and the Mailbox for Mac beta and have no complaints, I like the simple clean interface and functionality. Just wish they made a darker theme.

</comment><comment><USER28> Inbox is amazing. However, at some point the Android app started constantly crashing (even while being in the background) and now I have it crash every 30 seconds and no clue what's going on. Anyone else seen similar behaviour?

</comment><comment><USER29> Has anyone compared Inbox by Gmail with Mailbox by Dropbox? They seem to fill similar roles, and I've been happily using Mailbox for a few weeks, but I haven't seen a detailed comparison.

</comment><comment><USER30> Can you activate the web interface without having an android/iPhone smartphone? "Download Inbox on your phone to activate your account before using Inbox on the web."

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow, no reply yet points out that this is part of the whole effort to undermine one of our few open standards (email) and eventually turn everything into siloed walled-garden platforms.

Once Google Inbox is used widely, people will find it that much harder to use other e-mail systems.

I can't seem to find it now, but I read a wonderful article about how Facebook messaging and all sorts of other silos are about these platforms controlling everything and Google wishes they could have that same sort of control and push everything into their own proprietary messaging, although this fragmentation is obviously destructive for the internet and society overall.

<comment><USER32> As i'm not too familiar with email as a standard, could you elaborate on how this undermines it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I like inbox, on my phone. However, on a PC, I like the ability to use gmail's keyboard shortcuts etc. Inbox seems poorly designed for use as a desktop interface

</comment><comment><USER34> Is it still defaulting to "reply all"? That was a showstopper for me.

<comment><USER35> That almost bit me the first time. I think it may have changed a little at least though. I hit 'r' to reply and just tried it on a thread and noticed it only had the sender in the recipients field. Same if you click on the little reply icon to the right. The default if you click in the field does as labeled though, 'Reply to all'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why do I have to download an app if I just want to use it in the browser?

</comment><comment><USER37> I tried Inbox when they firstly released, soon as I found its essentially the same thing as Mailbox.app, I switched back to that.

Wait.. then M$ re-branded outlook on iOS, simply outruns both Inbox and Mailbox.</comment>


ECCploit is the first Rowhammer attack to defeat error-correcting code - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/11/potentially-disastrous-rowhammer-bitflips-can-bypass-ecc-protections/ <comment><USER2> Rowhammer is simply defective RAM marketed as usable. If your RAM will corrupt itself with certain access patterns, it is defective and should be replaced.

The manufacturers obviously don't want to, but the only way to stop this stupidity is to reject/return/refuse the product as defective if it shows this vulnerability. There's been a lot of efforts to downplay it, to the point that even some memory testing tools have made the tests for RH _optional_. This is ridiculous not just from a security standpoint, but overall correctness. Memory that just doesn't behave like memory should, is not fit for purpose.

Unfortunately RAM defects are often very subtle --- I remember a particularly irritating one which happened only when extracting a certain ZIP file; all the memory testing tools said the RAM was fine even with a few days of continuous running, and the file extracted correctly on a handful of other systems, but on this one it would always end up corrupt. Attaching a debugger or otherwise attempting to trace the cause naturally made it disappear. It was only swapping the RAM with a new module that fixed it.

<comment><USER3> As a follow on from this, I recently went to a talk by the author and asked whether certain brands of RAM was more vulnerable than others. They said that the newer the brand (and so newer the production process), the more bits are likely to flip, but even more established brands would still have some vulnerable bits.

So it seems more of an issue with a change in acceptable tolerances - what is fine for normal usage might not be secure. Also, I might have been mistaken but the author's response implied that no brand of RAM was not vulnerable.

<comment><USER4> Hmmm . . . some bright spark in marketing will realize there's an opportunity in "secure DRAM" now . . . :-/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder to what extent the encrypted memory enclaves in modern CPUs can mitigate these kinds of attacks.

If the data stored in the physical memory has been encrypted using a randomly generated secret key by the memory controller on the CPU, it should be impossible to generate an exact target data pattern in the victim _even when the aggressor and victim are in the same enclave_.

That in itself isn't sufficient to guard against all attacks, because the memory enclaves don't provide data integrity, only encryption. So if all you're trying to do is to change a victim's boolean that controls whether you have e.g. root access, then changing that boolean from false (0) to true (any non-zero value) is going to succeed with high probability despite the encryption.

Still, maybe there's an angle here that can help put an end to Rowhammer once and for all in a few hardware generations?

<comment><USER6> On the subject of RAM encryption, there's even an kernel modification that (ab)uses the x86 debug registers to store are AES key and transparently encrypts / decrypts RAM; Tresor.

> That [encrypted memory] in itself isn't sufficient to guard against all > attacks

You might want to read about authenticated encryption [2]. The authenticity of the decrypted data often lies in the block cipher mode (for example OBS) rather than the block primitive, where Tresor uses the AES-NI instruction. I would imagine SGX does something along the same lines.

[1] [https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/sec11/tech/full_papers/M...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/sec11/tech/full_papers/Muller.pdf)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticated_encryption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticated_encryption)

<comment><USER7> TRESOR doesn't have anything to do with encrypting RAM - it's just a tweak to existing _disk_ encryption methods which stores the encryption key in a debug register, rather than RAM. This gives resistance against attackers trying to break your disk encryption by trying to read your key directly from RAM.

<comment><USER6> Yes, indeed. Thanks for correcting that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> (previous post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18503795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18503795))

> Fortunately, while the attack would be extremely difficult to prevent, it > also looks to be very difficult to actually pull off in the wild. (...) the > VU Amsterdam team said a successful attack in a noisy system can take as > long as a week. (from > [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/21/rowhammer_ecc_serve...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/21/rowhammer_ecc_server_protection/))

Well, if you don't know that you are under attack, taking a week isn't exactly an advantage. And if the attack can be divided among many agents, even if not in parallel, can make it harder to find out that you're under attack.

</comment><comment><USER9> This attack depends on using many 1-bit errors to characterize the physical memory address. In other words, it defeats ECC _if your system ignores errors_. A lot of systems do ignore errors, but if you don't you can easily detect this attack before it's ready to strike.

</comment><comment><USER10> If someone has gotten this far with relatively ordinary tools and published the results, someone else probably has an exploit based on it but is not talking about it. You have to assume that the PLA's Third Department and NSA are working hard on it. Maybe the guys in St. Petersburg, although they haven't demonstrated that level of capability so far.

</comment><comment><USER11> How does this fare vs 2-bit ECC(e.g. Chipkill)? Article only mentions 1-bit ECC.

<comment><USER9> They talk about it in the paper. It doesn't really make things more difficult, it just affects which bits need to be flipped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I always assumed that ECC on these high-end systems was done in hardware by the memory controller. And thus there would be no timing side-channel. Is that really not the case?

<comment><USER13> Hardware implementation does not mean that there is no timing side-channel. Compute ECC takes few cycles. To avoid timing side-channel, you must design hardware for this purpose.

<comment><USER12> Yeh I realised afterwards that at these high clock speeds maybe they do need some extra cycles to do the correction. I don't see why you must do it in hardware to avoid timing side-channels. You just need to provide a constant latency i.e. The cpu ucode does some nops when correction is not necessary.

<comment><USER13> I mean, as long as your ECC is built directly into the silicon

<comment><USER12> In that case you need to do the exact opposite i.e. avoid the obvious optimisation of returning data early if no correction is required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you can flip one bit, then it isn't a big leap to flip multiple bits. No one who knew what they were talking about should have believed that ECC was a protection against rowhammer-style attacks.

</comment><comment><USER15> Leave it to Goodin to overyhype a non-practical attack. I wish this guy would retire. He's brought that overhyping clickbait style of reporting from the register to ars technica and I can't stand it anymore.

Rowhammer has been around for four years, yet is hasnever been seen in practice. Ever. Can we stop with reporters passing basic academic research as a current threat. It's just research pr0n, sci-fi hacking. It's not even remotely closely to being a threat.

<comment><USER16> FPGA developer here.

In a former project (with a custom board and FPGA, no processor), we encountered random bugs. We put many checks and finally came to the conclusion that our DDR modules were flipping bits randomly, but only on normal load. All test benches were running fine. Putting the modules in a PC did not show any problem.

How can you tell your boss "all DDR modules are faulty but run fine in a PC" and not seem crazy?

It was when I read about rowhammer attacks that I made the link. Changing the addressing schema completely solved the issue.

All these hardware related failures/attacks may not be a threat (yet), but for me, the underlying sand castle we are building things on is very worrying.

<comment><USER17> >Changing the addressing schema completely solved the issue.

Can you elaborate at all? Do you mean you changing the FPGA to not write to exactly the same spots over and over? And just set up something up similar to wear leveling?

<comment><USER16> It was very simple, I kept all the "logical" addresses the same, but swapped some low address bits with high address bits at the memory controller interface.

With this, the slowly moving indexes became big jumps. This avoids reading the same row over and over again (mixed with other requests).

<comment><USER13> > This avoids reading the same row over and over again

Didn't you notice a huge drop in performance producing row-buffer conflicts over and over ?

<comment><USER16> Good question. Jumping around the memory is clearly not good for throughput. Before the change, the mixing of requests between processes was already detrimental for performance anyway. All I can say is that we needed a fixed bandwidth and it was enough, before or after the change.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Javascript Visualization Libraries - <AUTHOR>

This post on Six Revisions is a great starter list: http://sixrevisions.com/javascript/20-fresh-javascript-data-visualization-libraries/<p>What libraries would you add to it? <comment><USER2> Flot (<http://code.google.com/p/flot/>) is missing from that list.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is another:

d3.js (<http://mbostock.github.com/d3/>)</comment>


Startup Lessons Learned - <AUTHOR> http://adam.blog.heroku.com/past/2010/4/30/startup_lessons_learned/ <comment><USER2> If you're such a fan of the guy, you should probably learn to spell his name right ;-)

It's "Eric Ries" not "Eric Reis".

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone found the video for Randy Komisar's talk?

I can't find it on justin tv. Isn't it available or am I just too blind?

Here's the link to Steve Blank's talk:<http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262670582>

</comment><comment><USER4> "Founders believe in a vision; maximizing their personal wealth is a side- effect, not a primary purpose. Being an entrepreneur is not a good way to make money, even though some people strike it rich."

I think there is something wrong with that statement. Being an entrepreneur is not a certain way to make money, but a feasible way to become rich.

<comment><USER5> You're optimistic!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been watching all the videos from the conference at Justin.tv. Steve Blank's talk is excellent.</comment>


MIT Media Lab hit with Twitter tirade by writer upset over Epstein ties - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/writer-does-twitter-takedown-mit-media-lab-taking-money-jeffrey-n1050821 <comment><USER2> Reid Hoffman is emerging as an especially gross specimen of the slugs who enabled Epstein to rehab his reputation.</comment>