Ex-Apple Employee Stole Secrets for Chinese Firm, U.S. Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-10/ex-apple-employee-charged-with-stealing-secrets-for-chinese-firm <comment><USER2> Duplicate of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502247)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sad at myself for feeling "well yeah not unexpected" after having worked at DENSO HQ (Toyota group supplier) where a Chinese natiuonal engineer stole 30,000 design documents in the early 2000s (it made national headlines when it happened). Because it's only 1/1000000 people that do this that will cause prejudice and disdain for all the good actors.

<comment><USER4> > I'm sad at myself for feeling "well yeah not unexpected" > Because it's only > 1/1000000 people that do this that will cause prejudice and disdain for all > the good actors.

Damn I came in here to say the same thing and feel sad at myself now too.

So not to be racial but from an American standpoint I liken it to hiring an American who happens to be Chinese versus an engineer from China.

For the first, they are American, their family is here, their life is here - where would they flee to?

For the latter, they're here temporarily most likely. So why not take the risk and get a big reward?

<comment><USER5> That's true for any nationality though. And Snowden was American and technically fled to Russia ?

<comment><USER6> That's quite a stretch in your comparison there, I don't think that stealing industrial trade secrets for profit is the same thing as whistle-blowing the fact that tinfoil hat sci-fi conspiracy theories were actually being carried out by the US government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> (posting from a throwaway for obvious reasons)

I currently sell to autonomous vehicle (AV) companies and spoke to a number of them. I believe that (most) chinese-money backed AV startup set up "R&D" offices in silicon valley purely for the tech/IP transfer back to China. Just to give you an example, an engineer at one of them boasted to me how his colleague, who used to work at a _brand-name-AV-company-you 've-heard-of_, copied code & provided access to all of it internally.

Although innovation in China might seem like a wild west to many Westerners, there's plenty of it happening there. It's impressive, extremely fast paced (10xSV), and deadly cut-throat. They know they're behind the US in AV and are playing catch up, with VC certainly knowing of & backing such approach.

Circling back to this story - just check who's backing XiaoPeng Motors/xmotors.ai: $700M in funding from GGV, Alibaba, IDG, Foxconn & others. All their R&D is in China, with a very small office in Palo Alto. What do you think the office here is for? I don't believe this fellow Xiaolang Zhang acted without Xiaopeng's "encouragement".

All of this being said, there are plenty of smart and honest engineers working on both sides of the Pacific to push the humanity forward. One could think though, maybe the more know-how transfer, the better for the entire world?

<comment><USER8> I wonder how Tesla will setup their "security" in their Tesla Factory in China. Considering how a worker recently misconfigured their factory software in a malicious manner... They better have some good failsafes ready!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I worked for a company that got acquired by a larger company who happened to have a JV with a Chinese company. A few months after the acquisition, one of us stumbled across a shockingly blatant copy of our product on the Chinese firm's website. Same box, same ports, same darned WebUI but translated to Chinese.

Now this was a hardware product with a _weekly_ data feed, so not only did someone at the JV feed all the specs and source code to the Chinese company, they sent them weekly updates.

Needless to say, when confronted about this the company didn't seem too surprised we found out, nor did the understand why everyone was so upset...

<comment><USER10> How do you reconcile this with idea that copyright and IP laws are too strong?

<comment><USER11> The common argument "copyright period should be shortened from 95-120 years down to 10-20 years" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities took place in less than 10 years.

The common argument "there should be no anti-circumvention provisions" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities would violate other provisions besides anti-circumvention provisions.

The common argument "patents should be weaker" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities would be illegal due to copyright laws, trade secret laws, trademark laws, and contract laws. It's not even clear if there were any patents involved in this situation.

The less common argument "copyright should be abolished" could still be compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities could be illegal due to trade secret laws, trademark laws, and contract laws.

I don't often hear criticism of trade secret laws or trademark laws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seriously HN, every time these posts come up, it becomes a fest for racists to pin their one off experience with Chinese people onto the entire race of people, the definition of racism. I do want to hear an ex-Apple employee doing corporate espionage may be, but I don't want to hear about your Chinese grad students. That has _nothing_ do do with the story other than the race of the individuals.

I'm almost at the point where I want to just flag articles like this because they have in recent months become a sordid data point pulling down the signal to noise ratio that is usually commendable on this site.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps make an argument using some data. Do Chinese companies engage in IP theft or corporate espionage at a higher rate than other countries? Is there a cultural point of relevance rather than race? We don't hear of many stories of ethnic Chinese Singaporeans or Taiwanese doing this sort of thing — when it comes to Chinese, it's almost exclusively related to mainland, Communist China. Is it racial to point out that there could be some validity to the argument that mainland/communist Chinese engage in this sort of behavior at a higher rate than Indians or pretty much every other Asian country? Do we know that not to be true?

I'm not looking at data, so I don't know the answer, but dismissing an apparent cultural/political tendency to engage in IP theft or espionage as "racist" is simplistic. HN loves to generalize about Americans and American companies and their practices, yet to do that with China is somehow racist? Regarding Chinese students — how do you think they get permission to study in the US? Chinese people don't have unlimited freedom of travel. You have to be "approved" before they'll let you study abroad. That "approval" has a lot to do with the political reliability of that person. So while it is fair to say all Chinese don't agree with this sort of thing, it is fair to say that the Chinese that end up in US graduate programs represent a set of those who have demonstrated adherence to the CCP mindset.

Race doesn't have anything to do with the discussion; it's a cultural- political question and, culturally, mainland communist Chinese have a different viewpoint than international IP law upholds.

You rarely hear of a British person stealing secrets or British companies blatantly stealing sensitive IP. Is that because it happens far less frequently or because it doesn't get reported?

It seems as if the Chinese way of doing business supports these sorts of situations and it seems that the Chinese cultural attitude towards IP is at odds with the very idea of IP. It's fair to point that out. Flagging a legitimate story because you don't like the racial implication is itself racist — you seem to be suggesting that we ought not to discuss this if the perpetrator is of a certain nationality because it might reflect badly on the country and it's people. Censoring something because you object to the conclusions that might be fairly drawn is to limit the range of intellectual discussion.

Despite the seeming cooperation, China views the US as an adversary. It would be naïve to discount the critique of Chinese practices as simple racism.

<comment><USER14> _> We don't hear of many stories of ethnic Chinese Singaporeans or Taiwanese doing this sort of thing..._

We literally heard a story of a _white American_ doing this exact thing just last year.[1] Nobody complained about America's cultural/political tendencies. Even though there's plenty of academic cheating here.[2] It was just about that white guy. The racism is in the double standard and confirmation bias.

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

[2] [https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard- gradua...](https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard-graduates- cheated-in-studies-survey-finds/100009)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Disclaimer: I am speaking from personal experiences and know that, despite these experiences, there are tons of Chinese engineers who work their ass off and maintain great professional integrity.

That said...my experience with Chinese graduate students has been incredibly disappointing. While they made up the majority of our graduate computer science program, most had no respect for academic conduct guidelines. I experienced this both as a student and a teacher, even having to meet with two Chinese students during my office hours to explain that they couldn't turn in assignments they copied from others. They had explicitly asked me if this was okay, so I was happy to inform them.

I would venture to say that there is a cultural disconnect with the Chinese when it comes to the idea of intellectual property. I obviously cannot speak from experience, but it seems the political atmosphere in China probably contributes to this a lot.

I would love to learn more about how Chinese engineers (in the USA and abroad) feel about this.

Last note: has anyone looked at the website or Twitter account of the company this person is moving to? Their website is completely devoid of any actual information, and their Twitter account is a mix of horrible car mock-ups and announcements about their company raising millions in venture capital. ???

<comment><USER16> It's funny how afraid people are about tiptoeing around this issue. Cheating among chinese students is widespread and blatant, and they do not even pretend to care. They are completely shameless about it. Everyone with Chinese students knows it, but it's politically incorrect to call it out. Which they are also aware of, and take advantage of.

<comment><USER17> FWIW.

In my undergrad days, long ago now, cheating was rampant throughout the (overwhelmingly white and male) CS student body.

One professor, whom I admired, got fed up with this. He handed back a particular assignment to his class, ungraded, with the code of conduct stapled to each student's submission. He then pointedly told the class that if anyone needed to come and tell him anything after class, he would be in his office. This move was the talk of the dorms for weeks.

But nothing really came of it. This stern warning no doubt caused some fear and anguish among those affected, but that was the extent of it. Nobody got expelled, flunked the course, or had their record damaged in any way.

This is just an anecdote. I certainly don't have any data on the prevalence of cheating, or on differences in attitudes toward cheating, among Chinese versus other students. But I'd be surprised if there is a measurable difference. In my experience, everyone is completely shameless and nobody faces any real consequences even when they are caught red-handed.

<comment><USER18> If it's an assignment many people will copy this has always happened and will always be true for probably every human being anywhere.

That's why exams exist. Make them hard. People who do the homework will succeed. Others won't.

We're too afraid of making people fail.

<comment><USER10> And yet exams can be (are?) a poor way to test knowledge.

I'm ideologically against exams. For many they are stressful, and they don't represent any real life scenario as you will always have access to reference material on the job.

<comment><USER18> > For many they are stressful, and they don't represent any real life scenario > as you will always have access to reference material on the job.

Good. They should be stressful. I don't want people who can't handle stress being doctors or engineers. Out in the field they will have to make decisions that will not just be "look it up in the reference manual."

And it's not like you can't have reference materials on exams. All of my engineering exams were open reference. It didn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone's interested, here's the PDF of the indictment:

[https://www.pdfhost.net/index.php?Action=DownloadFile&id=734...](https://www.pdfhost.net/index.php?Action=DownloadFile&id=73455ddecba090e8f06b8161e4d7deae)

It's quite an interesting read.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sort of dumb that he told Apple about his intentions to switch jobs. He would have easily gotten away if he hadn't. Guilty conscience?

<comment><USER20> I'm sort of surprised they don't have automated flagging for activity like downloading a years worth of documents in an evening.

<comment><USER21> Benign instances of that happen all the time. Picking out actionable anomalies from event data like this is one of the big problems in information security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The anti-Chinese sentiment on this thread is T H I C K.

May I remind everyone that not so long ago another guy was caught red-handed downloading autonomous vehicle IP from a major SV firm to take with him to a new company. He was a white American.[1]

I don't recall hearing much about rampant cheating at top U.S. universities as a cultural norm[2] where "note-sharing and consulting teaching fellows was widespread."[3] Or how lack of respect for academic conduct guidelines at top technical universities was so deeply ingrained in the culture that "many students... turned in identical solutions" while seeming confused by the very concept of "what constitutes cheating."[4]

I don't recall hearing anecdotes from ex-TAs about how while they are of course encountered tons of honest white guys, frat bros as a group have a reputation for being notorious cheaters that just don't seem to hold themselves to the same standards of intellectual honesty that we do. Must be the high-pressure, status-obsessed cultures they come from.

No, the commentary here was mostly focused on just that one white guy.

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

[2] [https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard- gradua...](https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard-graduates- cheated-in-studies-survey-finds/100009)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal)

[4] [https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/22/technology/scandal- over-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/22/technology/scandal-over- cheating-at-mit-stirs-debate-on-limits-of-teamwork.html)

<comment><USER22> The issue is what the result will be long-term of these actions.

Currently we allow innovative firms to pay a lot of money for engineers who then develop unique and great products that carry a premium. This applies pretty much across the developed world.

If "IP theft" is allowed to occur at any decent scale, every market will rapidly become a race to the bottom, and premium products will simply cease to exist, with a lot of casualties in both the companies involved and the engineers doing development.

So what does it have to do with China, and Chinese nationals ? Well simple: the Chinese government has large-scale corporate espionage as a stated goal [1] and has gotten caught red-handed in more than a few cookie jars, for example [2] ... that is seriously at odds with the goals of, frankly, every engineer and company worldwide (even Chinese ones). Note that in most cases, this appears to be not "actual" corporate espionage, but it is actually the state organizing large-scale corporate espionage (and sabotage in some cases), then going out to Chinese companies and actually forcing them to use the stolen data.

The predictable response is of course that engineers, companies, management and even unions will start systematically boycotting anything to do with the Chinese state, and that includes Chinese nationals' job prospects. This does not reflect on them, except insofar as they support this disgraceful state policy, but there is no alternative.

The ideal solution would be that Chinese people start sabotaging and striking and ... until the Chinese state gets the message. That's what SHOULD happen. After that, trust can be earned again. When the Chinese state starts cooperating and imposing large scale fines on companies caught duplicating products with stolen data, then this can end.

Obviously the current situation cannot exist for any real length of time without ever more serious consequences.

Now I get it, the Chinese state is trying very hard to confuse acting against their spying with "racism" (funny that given their ethnic and religious policies in China that that is not considered disgraceful. This is Hitler berating countries for not treating Jews well (which, incidentally, he did do, hell, he even had a point))

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

[2] [https://www.pddnet.com/news/2017/10/video-day-four-legged- ro...](https://www.pddnet.com/news/2017/10/video-day-four-legged-robot-chinas- answer-boston-dynamics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I do not wish to question the veracity of this story, however it plays into a narrative where the West is advanced and China is merely stealing I.P. from hard working folks in the West.

I fear that one day we will wake up and realise that we are behind, to discover that our friends in China have been innovating.

We have had this already with internet infrastructure. Whilst half of the USA and rural UK struggle along with internet served over fifty year old copper cables, in Eastern Europe, after the fall of the wall, countries such as Estonia were able to leapfrog typical Western infrastructure and lay fibre to the door for everyone. They might not have done so with Estonian made Cisco routers, however having this leapfrogged infrastructure in place fostered an environment of innovation - Skype being from Estonia.

In automotive there is a real risk for Western auto companies that they will not be able to compete with the electric cars that will be coming out of China. Chinese electric cars could be cosy and a really nice space to be in during one's commute, like an extension of one's living room and a good place to get work done. Meanwhile Western alternatives might still be trying to be yesteryear's status symbols, e.g. 'sporty' cars where the fake exhaust note, theoretical time around the Nurburgring and whatever else excites geriatric Top Gear presenters 'matters'.

A new generation of Western consumer might not want these 'dad cars' and just might prefer whatever comes out of China. There may be cheap plastics in these cars, they may not even have self-driving, but the sum of the parts, price and reliability might trump Western alternatives. We have had this before with VW and Japanese compact cars gouging out the U.S. Big Three. There was no rocket science in the VW Beetle but it was a better buy than what Detroit was offering at the time. Putting up tariffs and complaining about the Japanese merely copying didn't really help.

<comment><USER24> I think ex-employees steal previous company data all the time. It's just happens that add "china" to the title these days can grab more attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fascinating how _none_ of the Hacker News comments on a similar story some months back (employee defecting to another company with driverless-technology trade secrets) talked about Anthony Levandowski's nationality or race.

</comment><comment><USER26> So did the Chinese company actually acquire the stolen data?

</comment><comment><USER27> Adam Smith thought intellectual property rights were an 'unnecessary evil'.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can China not innovate at all? Why are they so keen on stealing IP? Their other homegrown products such as WeChat and Xiaomi seem pretty competitive and very catered to the local market. This is just giving such a bad name to the country and supporting Trump's broad claims that China thrives on IP theft.

<comment><USER29> They're in a hurry. Culturally today they believe in a sort of global manifest destiny for the near future of their nation. They believe they're destined to be _the_ dominant power.

It's dramatically faster and cheaper to steal than to invest decades and countless billions of dollars doing it the hard way.

The only way China can fully stand toe to toe with the US in the next two decades or so, is to aggressively plunder beneficial IP wherever they can. There has been no serious consequence for them doing so the past 30 years of their rise. It's not below their dignity, because the mission overrules all. They'll continue doing it until the cost is too high; their calculation is probably that by that point they will already be fully self-sustaining as a superpower. At that point they'll show you the door if you have a problem with it (or worse).

China very carefully plays by the hide your power and bide your time strategy. Xi recently admonished state media about bragging too heavily; that's all about playing down their strength. China's ideal is to play it down until they're strong enough so as to be beyond a reasonable challenge by other powers (at least in their sphere of influence, Asia broadly).

<comment><USER30> China (PRC) culture suffers from two systemic weakness: the selfishness created in one-child, post Cultural Revolution, and the cha-bu-duo (nearly good enough) attitude of rapid modernization. In Asia many consumers think of Japan and Korea as being committed to craftmanship and China as being low-cost questionable quality.

Engineers and innovators growing up in such environment are naturally not adverse to cutting corners to reach their goals quickly.

However I have to add that, given the huge population of China, the top 0.1% can still be enormous, and once China learn to discard its shardy attitudes, they can race ahead rapidly.</comment></comment></comment>


The Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov - <AUTHOR> http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html <comment><USER2> Fantastic article. Every teacher should read this.</comment>


iPhone 7. Apple Just Showed Us the Future - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@titanas/iphone-7-apple-just-showed-us-the-future-a93e1c969d5f <comment><USER2> I honestly can't tell if this is profound satire or contentless nonsense. Without knowing, it's impossible to discuss this.</comment>


Please Keep JavaScript Dumb - <AUTHOR> http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2019/03/08/keep-javascript-dumb/ <comment><USER3> This article loses some credibility when citing arrow functions as a complex and "professional" feature. In reality, arrow functions are simple - <USER2> over the weirdness and complexity of normal js functions.

<comment><USER4> This may be an unpopular opinion, but I disagree. Arrow functions are unnecessary syntactic sugar, and, like much of ES6, feel like the language adding opinionation.

Enterprise codebases I work on are locked to ES5 and scale to 100k+ lines. These codebases cannot afford to layer on every new JS "innovation" and hope to remain consistent across 7+ years (the average lifespan of an enterprise app) and multiple developers.

To assume that this is just because of developer laziness or inability to learn is to ignore the realities of apps built and deployed behind the firewalls of Fortune 500 companies.

<comment><USER5> > Arrow functions are unnecessary syntactic sugar

Unnecessary is a matter of taste. Most don't like having to bring out `.bind()` or inside of the function using `let that = this`.

<comment><USER6> Whoever thinks it's easier to understand the this scope because they have to explicitly declare it must just like to not learn better methods to program.

const that = this;

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> IT is brutal. You either evolve or you die. If JS didn't introduce new features, it would be just replaced with the "next big thing" that introduces things. Arrow functions, classes and promises don't make things more complicated. They are added to make things more readable

<comment><AUTHOR> I sympathize and resonate with the author.

While for me, the JS language features are still manageable. What has outgrown me are the layers upon layers of abstractions used in modern JS app, like React/Redux/... We no longer have a straightforward, plain JS app. To understand the code, we have to 'see through' the thick layers of frameworkds/middleware.

Modern JS app is becoming as ugly as J2EE last time used to be.

<comment><USER8> This really reads like it was written by someone who does not know how React and Redux are used. Both of those libraries are incredibly straightforward and minimal in their functionality — orders of magnitude less complex and multifaceted than something like Hibernate or Spring. When you compare a React app with something written with what JS "used" to be (vanilla JS with browser hacks, jQuery, Backbone) the number of hacks or workarounds per line of code in the React app is much lower in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Folks, Understand all of you. But what can I say is to wait, keep calm, let all the fancy new comer like Angular, React and Vue going ahead. Wait and it will be sure, in 2 years, everybody, everybody write all their stuff in their known language and only compile it down to native, web-assembly. Gheers.</comment>


Obama signs bill "unlocking" cellphones - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-signs-bill-unlocking-cellphones/

<comment><USER2> Article is misleading, The librarian of congress is permitted to make exemptions from the DMCA every few years. After exempting cell phone unlocking twice, he declined to do so again on the grounds that these exemptions were not supposed to be used to create permanent public policy.

Congress and the President have now exempted unlocking with a new law, which is exactly what the librarian of congress said should be done if they want to create permanent public policy for that exemption. So they did not overtune a decision of his, he was in support of this, he just insisted it be done properly.</comment>


Twitter appears to be protecting Google's PigeonTransit - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/OptimizingMe/status/1135731744496209920 <comment><USER2> Not really sure a locked tweet or tweets is a sure sign of a conspiracy.</comment>


Choosing the "Right" Maternity Leave Plan - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130722141555-79695780-choosing-the-right-maternity-leave-plan

<comment><AUTHOR> I get a bit of this "doing it wrong" vibe from friends and family when I'm on vacation. I take time out of the "work day" for personal stuff, but when I take time out of "vacation" for work stuff, I get the fish-eye.</comment>


Introducing Sikka: A Firewall for Meteor Apps - <AUTHOR> https://meteorhacks.com/introducing-sikka-a-firewall-for-meteor-apps.html

<comment><USER2> I don't know how to feel about this. Any production app should already use a reverse-proxy (e.g. NGinx or Varnish), and blocking and similar logic can already be done there. I think that the problem does not warrant its own solution at this level.

<comment><AUTHOR> This attack can't solves with Reverse proxies or similar. For proxies, this is just a simple WebSocket message.

So, it's hard (or can't) detect in the proxy layer or with something like Cloudflare. That's why we need a something like Sikka, which understand DDP, the protocol behind Meteor.

Anyway, only we detect bad IPs. It's a good idea to ban them from the network layer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very cool! Thanks for yet another great contribution to the Meteor open-source ecosystem.</comment>


Free Pitch Deck Presentation Template for PowerPoint and Keynote - <AUTHOR> http://pitchdeck.improvepresentation.com <comment><USER2> Nice gesture but I'm a little surprised this made top of HN. Slow news day?

</comment><comment><USER3> The lettering overlaps on slide 13 [http://d.pr/i/Myfh](http://d.pr/i/Myfh)

Analysis is spelled wrong on slide 10 [http://d.pr/i/Tu1S](http://d.pr/i/Tu1S)

Your "investing" slide isn't aligned properly [http://d.pr/i/fFJR](http://d.pr/i/fFJR)

And this is how your "contact the authors" page looks [http://d.pr/i/PLlp](http://d.pr/i/PLlp)

Just thought you would want to know. Cool templates, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> austenallred you're the man! Thanks for your time reviewing our presentation. We'll fix everything soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure it's a step up from no design.

But this "modern colorful web design" style isn't necessarily the best design system to present your business idea. It's a trend, so it looks familiar to viewers of your presentation, which is good. However, it also communicates young and inexperienced in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hey, this looks really great! Very clean layout. Looks like you have a typo under "competitor analysis" though.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback, git push coming up :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What happens if you want to add another slide? Is it easy for your additions to stay consistent with the design?

</comment><comment><USER7> great job. was happy to tweet for you guys.</comment>


Making 2D JavaScript Games - <AUTHOR> http://2djavascriptgames.com

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting, but how about some info on distributing games through App Stores? There's so much information on using tool/framework X to make games, and so little good information on how you actually take a JS/HTML5 game and get it into stores, handling multiple devices and ensuring good performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's a good idea. I've been looking at using cocoonjs in particular as a final chapter on getting js/html5 games into stores: [https://www.ludei.com/cocoonjs/](https://www.ludei.com/cocoonjs/)</comment></comment>


ASK HN: Quad monitors - advice? tips? tricks? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone out there using quad monitors?  I'm getting ready to buy a new desktop system, and wanted to set it up with quad monitors and have had a hard time finding unbiased (read: non-sales) advice.
Is it better to have two dual-monitor graphics cards or one card that supports four displays?  Do both cards have to be the exact same?  Are there any cards that work especially well?  Any that I should avoid?
I am going to be using Windows XP Professional if that makes a difference.  The system is for work, so I'm not especially concerned about graphic performance.
Any four-headed hackers out there have any insight?  Thanks in advance for your help! <comment><USER2> I've never used more than two monitors, but I know most people who run three monitors use two (usually mismatched) cards. I don't know of any four-display video cards - I've never needed one - but if they're a lot more expensive than two off-the-shelf video cards, I don't see any reason not to go for the cheaper option.

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried it once, and decided I would rather have two larger monitors.

I use dual 24" on my mac and I love it.

(It seemed like I was forced to move my head a lot more with a quad monitor setup - either vertically (cube setup) or horizontally (4 in a row setup), and it wasn't very enjoyable to me.)

[Edit: I was using all 20" monitors for my test, and I actually liked 3 monitors more than 4 - there was a logical "main" monitor that way.]

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm probably going to use 19" monitors to start with since I have a couple of them laying around. That might make the display a little more "compact". I guess if I don't like the cube setup, I could always drop back to three in a row like you suggest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have 3 monitors hooked up to my mac pro(2x20" 1x30"). Could have up to 2x30" + 2x24" with my 2 video card setup.

My new setup will be a macbook pro (replacing a macbook) and a single 30" monitor when I'm at my desk. I found its better to cut down on how much you run so you can focus.

Look at changing the way you work... No email notifications, don't leave chat or IM running, use your pc when you are working and get away when you are not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I could see that focus might be an issue. But as it is, we use remote desktop quite a bit, so I've always got a couple of other desktops up that I'm working on. And most of the time, I'm doing comparisons between databases or configurations, etc, so I think that the 4 monitors will help with that process.</comment></comment>


Why Dale Carnegie wouldn't use Craigslist today - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/3ad6ed6adbea

<comment><USER2> I feel like a disclosure might be necessary here, this reads quite like a pitch for a company that the author might be an advisory to.

Otherwise, he really loves craigslist and it's competitors.</comment>


Favorite IDE for PHP? - <AUTHOR>

I'm just curious to see what everyone's favorite IDE is for PHP development (I'm specifically using the CodeIgniter framework).  I'm just now getting into Eclipse, and it seems decent.  Anyone know of good alternatives? <comment><USER2> I love TextMate for PHP projects because of command-t and snippets, but the syntax highlighting and indentation is a bit off sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Crimson Editor, runs great with Wine and it's super light weight - been using it for 5 plus years now.

</comment><comment><USER4> I worked on Zend and now switched to Eclipse. I think Eclipse is better with xdebug!

</comment><comment><USER5> I LOVE TextMate, although jEdit can be configured to be a nice editor too...

</comment><comment><USER6> Zend Development Environment - in one word: amazing!

</comment><comment><USER7> Komodo Edit

</comment><comment><USER8> VIM</comment>


The Grim, Racist Methods of One Brooklyn Landlord - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/grim-racist-methods-of-one-brooklyn-landlord.html

<comment><USER2> Just think how much worse the WASP landlords are, given that the WASP elite are the ones with actual political power.</comment>


Ask HN: sideproject, generating revenue & profit what's next? - <AUTHOR> Let me first give an introduction. I'am a 30 year old dutch software developer working at one of the largest internet companies in The Netherlands. My wife is a Highschool teacher, teaching Dutch language to 13- 15 year olds. Almost 3 years ago we build a website for here students to use. After a few months it took off and visitors are climbing. From our stats we see that a lot of schools are using it. We got good media coverage and top-5 rankings in google for important keywords. The succes came as a surprise to us and we decided to create a business out of it.
We provide 250 free exercises and since a year we also provide subscriptions: personal subscription (5 euro / year) and classroom subscription (35 euro / year). With a subscription customers have access to their performance report and a few "member-only" exercises. With a classroom subscription a teacher can see the results of their students, look into the exercices they made and what mistakes they made. And some other extra functionality.
All this functionality is primarly used & tested by my wife and her class. For us it is a sideproject; it is generating revenue & profit, a couple of hundreds a month. Enough for me to cover my hosting expensives, and working less hours at my day job.
My wife is very clear: she is a teacher and wants to teach. She doesn't want to persue the business fulltime. Also she is pregnant with our first child. So technically: I'm the one running the business and my wife is my biggest (& most influentual) customer.
I'm not sure what to do next: we have a few hundreds a month and I would really want to grow. So I can work even less at my day job and more on our project.
But we have a hard time figuring out how to scale:
* Selling to schools is hard, even more without dedicated sales. With keeping the price low we think it's easier for schools to buy. * The succes of the website started with the free exercises and quality content. We got a lot of free press with that. We don't want to risk our name with making it all premium content * We don't want to run advertising as it would distract students, and make schools don't want to use it anymore. * I work at the website besides my main job, doing all the coding and administration stuff
* My wife doesn't want to sell (the website is tied to her lastname)
* We are anxious to get outside funding, we want control over the project ourselves * We are afraid to charge more (risk of losing customers) * We only want to go into different subject when we can find good teachers who can create quality exercices.
Sofar the options are to creat more verticals (we need subject experts there) or create a better site.
So what to do? I would really like more time to develop more functionality. We get a lot of e-mails asking for different kind of exercises. Which I simply don't have the time for to develop. I feel we are an unique team: teacher and softwaredeveloper working together. I think we have a great oppertunity to create a big product. Good software is a huge gain for edecution.
But I don't know how to execute on this oppertunity, any tips? <comment><USER2> Hey wasigh, I'm in a similar situation, developer w/ teacher wife and education business. Two most important things I've learned:

1) You can sell to schools, but not by "selling" to schools. Instead sell to the teachers and they'll sell to the school for you. There are lots of ways for teachers to get schools to pay for stuff they want (grants, discretionary funds...). If you create a great product one teacher will tell another and before you know it a group of them want it and they'll pitch their principal.

I sold to 15 or so schools last year (big, small, public, private) and every one of them started with the school contacting me. I realize 15 is not a lot, but total time I spent on those sales was maybe 10 minutes and $0 each. I replied to emails, setup accounts and generated invoices.

2) As a developer you're going to want to solve the scale problem by coding. You need to fight this.

Take the money you make and buy adwords - they work (<http://pseudocoder.com/blog/my-adwords-spending-for-2010>)

Talk to your customers constantly - make incremental improvements based on their feedback. Only when there is overwhelming demand add a new feature or in your case expand to a new area.

Do more SEO. You're top 5? Not good enough. The difference between #1 and #5 is huge. Figure out what keywords make you the most money (might not be what you think they are) and attack those.

A final note (this one is tough and I'll try to be tactful). In the end your wife (however awesome she was in getting the site started) is just a user. If she's not interested in the business side then you need to take ownership. That means you may make changes without consulting her and that are unpopular with her that are better for the rest of the community.

Email me if you want to discuss anything offline.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply:

Currently most of our sales to schools go to teachers (that's why we keep the prices low, a teacher might even be tempted to pay by themself. We sold to over 40 classes.

I'll follow up on the invitation and e-mail you shortly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some random thoughts:

\- Don't sell to students, sell to parents (apart from the schools of course). They are more motivated to than children to pursue good grades and they have money.

\- Charge more. If you lose users, so what? You've only lost the ones that you can't make money from in the first place. (although I see that you've raised the price already).

\- Your wife doesn't sound committed. No selling the thing (migrate to a new domain now to get rid of the name association, what's the problem?), no charging more out of fear, fear of losing control. If it's a hobby for her, and you want it to be more, you have a problem. Solve this first.

\- Find subject experts on a profit-sharing basis if you don't want to invest any money (although seriously at your age and your household makeup, 5000 euros should not be a major problem and it would get you sufficient content for 5 different subjects).

\- If you will work 4 days after your baby is born, you'll have even less time than you have now to work on this! This one day will be full-time babysitting unless you take her to day care, which I presume you'll only do for 3 days a week!

\- The way your website is structured, it doesn't seem to be easy to expand into different subjects.

\- The 'original' website (with the free content) looks like a 1997 Geocities page. It also doesn't make many attempts at upselling, apart from some small links to the premium version.

\- Have you tried calling schools, or the associations your wife is a member of? If she uses it, ask her colleagues why they don't. Then fix those issues.

<comment><USER3> Wait, looking further either you've obfuscated most of the info in the post, or I've been looking at the website of your competitor that offers exactly the same functionality. If it's that last one, you could look up his turnover at the KvK to estimate his market share. He seems to have had quite a bit of press coverage too, so if he can't turn it into something big, either he isn't trying very much (quite likely) or it's really a hard market (also likely :) )

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess you looked into my competition: cambiumned.nl or extraned.nl? The main purpose for us to start our site was because the geocities like of those sites.

I guess you nailed it here: \- Your wife doesn't sound committed. No selling the thing (migrate to a new domain now to get rid of the name association, what's the problem?), no charging more out of fear, fear of losing control. If it's a hobby for her, and you want it to be more, you have a problem. Solve this first.

We must decide if it is hobby or business :)

<comment><USER3> Yes that's the one - I guess another remark is that your SEO needs work :)

For 2.50 you can get his yearly accounts from [http://www.kvk.nl/handelsregister/zoekenframeset.asp?zk=0...](http://www.kvk.nl/handelsregister/zoekenframeset.asp?zk=0&url=https://server.db.kvk.nl/TST- BIN/FU/TSWS001@?BUTT=302826140000) \- that should give you some insight into the amount of customers he has and how viable the market is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ranking higher is hard, those sites have been around for ages.

We rank quite well on: "Nederlands oefenen" & "Werkwoordspelling" for example.

I don't know if he is obligated to send his yearly accounts to the KVK?

Getting more info on the marketsize is a good tip :)

<comment><USER3> Depends on how he's incorporated, as an 'eenmanszaak' he's not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps a quick chat with patio11 would help here? I can't imagine a more appropriate HNer for the kinds of questions you have. He has been thinking about the education market for quite a while. He has long advocated finding freelancers who you can pay to build up content. What about hiring some freelance subject experts to build questions for you? That removes at least one burden to expansion and lets you trade money for time. Along those same lines, you might focus your energy on automating as much of your maintenance as possible so that you can focus on developing novel stuff. Maybe even hire a freelance web developer to do some of the more boilerplate stuff so you can focus on the truly unique stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> ) Read every single business-related post at patio11's blog [1]. That is great advice for any startup (due to the quality of the content), but for a startup selling to educators? Unmissable. In case you are unaware, patio11 is extremely popular on HN (for varied and valid reasons), and he runs a website which sells bingo cards to teachers.

) Agreed re: adverts - as a user, I would be annoyed that I am paying for your site and still seeing ads.

) Try outsourcing the creation of new material - the more subjects you cover, the better. There are many freelance where you can find teachers in various subjects, and your wife can act as "quality control".

) Use Adwords to bring more people to your site

) If you are specifically targeting Dutch schools, maybe creating a Hyves app will help? (Unless that is your employer :D ) [1] <http://www.kalzumeus.com/>

) Perhaps try to attend some startup groups in the Netherlands? I live in Amsterdam, I should try and find one too... maar mijn Nederlands is niet geod.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want to develop you're Dutch skills I have the site for you :) Our site is used a lot by non-native Dutch. I have some connections to startups in Amsterdam. Maybe I can introduce you to some.

<comment><USER5> Sure thing - my email is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Don't give up your day job until you're making 10x what you are making now. Right now, you are likely not heavily taxed on that income, if it becomes your main source of income, you will.

2\. Can you turn your day job into a 3 or 4 day a week job?

3\. To scale: yes, free quality content attracts users. You need to find out ways to create that in a sustainable way.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Tnx, i'm working 4,5 days now. When the baby is born I will be working 4 days. Getting from the current income to 10x at the current grow rate will take us 4 years at least.

Any advice how to make it sustainable?

<comment><USER6> If it is going to take 4 years to generate minimal income, then it's a hobby for now :) Look for ways to increase income. 1. charge more. Try it. Charge 4 euro/m, see what happens. 2. expand your market. more niches or more countries. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First, congratulations on making something people want. If people are requesting more exercises it probably means you have a user base that: a)cares about your product and b)wants to see it continue. Yes, going after schools is hard, but going after teachers may be easier. There was a HN post a couple of months ago about a student grading application someone here had created and in trying to sell it, he ran into similar difficulties with targeting schools. But what he was finding was that teachers valued his application enough to purchase it themselves, then they would tell other teachers at the school, and pretty soon the whole school signed on. I think you should focus on keeping your product at a price point that would allow teachers to purchase it themselves. Maybe even try to build in some social features that would encourage teachers to spread the word. Then, with the revenue, outsource content creation. Finally, once traction and revenue reach a point where it makes sense for you to leave your full-time job or hire an additional developer, add functionality that would appeal to entire schools or school districts. Also, congratulations on the little hacker on the way!

</comment><comment><USER8> You've solved some of the hardest problems already - getting the initial traffic, a decent product, initial user base, and marketing. You need to work on profitability and market size.

I agree that you should keep the free exercises to keep traffic flowing to your site. Don't focus too heavily on these, though.

Without knowing much about your market or product:

\- Estimate the size of your market. A back of the envelope exercise should help you estimate how many schools are in the Netherlands, how many classrooms at each school, how many students. That's your current market size. How can you expand that? Can you extend to universities, or to other countries in Europe? Increasing your market size gives you more potential customers.

\- You need to extract more money out of each user. $5/user/year requires a huge amount of users to generate even basic profit. Can you offer a premium subscription, for $15 per month? $20 per month? Compare this to the cost of private tutoring for parents. Put high value material in the premium subscription. Offer a 7-day free trial of premium.

I think you've got a good opportunity, you need to monetize it.

<comment><USER9> To be blunt I think you can charge more for this product. €5 / month is more realistic. I would tie in a price hike with a bunch of new features and keep the free model going.

Years ago a friend of mine doubled the price of his software product and sales went up because it now seemed more professional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some ideas:

\- which subjects make most sense to expand into (math, science, languages, ...) ?

\- maybe there is an opportunity to have former teachers create exercises for you (as freelancers). They have a lot of experience creating exercises, after all.

\- including subjects like math could make it easier to expand to other countries, though I don't know how different education systems are (maybe the UK, Germany, France would be interesting as they large markets but of course there are other factors like fragmentation of the educational system in Germany, for example)

\- as someone else has already suggested make it attractive to invite your classmates to your website. Rather than offering cash maybe free months (after their current subscription period) or discounts if enough students from one class sign up would be an option.

\- maybe offer more options to obtain classroom membership, e.g. sponsored by parents, more than n people from one class signing up, maybe even local businesses as school sponsors but that could have the negative side affects you mention about ads)

\- maybe offer "gift" memberships and free months if a group of students sign up at the same time, things like that?

\- would it be attractive to people offering private tutoring to have a "group" membership for their students (e.g. up to n students/year) which includes seeing results of their students) ?

\- maybe including other subjects provides an opportunity to raise prices, i.e. charge separately for additional subjects but offer a "all subjects included" premium membership.

You have not included a link to your site (or I missed it ?), would love to take a look.

Good luck with your business (and your parenthood!) :°)

(I'm more of a developer who _cough_ failed with businesses twice so my suggestions should be taken with a grain of salt)

</comment><comment><USER11> Congratulations and it sounds extremely inspiring to hear someone is doing something about education. I would love to get into the education space but I can't seem to pinpoint an idea that's sustainable.

If you have a moment, I would love to have a chat about the challenges you faced when you first began and so on. I know you're still facing challenges but I think the fact that you've proven to get the initial traffic is a big win. I think one of the biggest proponents you can do is to get your customers to sell for you - get the parents to spread it to their friends and other parents.

<comment><AUTHOR> feel free to DM me at www.twitter.com/wasigh

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe you could hook up with high school libraries. These are turning more and more into media-centers where school kids use computers during periods they don't have classes. Then you could scale up to a school-wide license. Oh, I'm Dutch as well, so at least we're talking about the same educational system.

I also like the idea of comparing it to private tutoring, which parents are definitely willing to fork out some money for.

</comment><comment><USER13> Gather feedback from your current consumers, including students.

If selling to school is hard, sell to students. Maybe offer a little cash for referring their whole class.

</comment><comment><USER14> Well if you don't think you can do it yourself maybe look for funding to hire some help? Did you get a change to read this today? <http://www.ycombinator.com/imaginek12.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I looked into it, however we are not in the position to relocate to the US. And also imagineK12 looks very US orientated. While our product is very focused on The Netherlands. (and Dutch schools abroad)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You should try some collaboration with KhanAcademy . It's a non-profit measure but you can take out your basic expenses from it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Do you have contact information?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure: DM me at www.twitter.com/wasigh

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Side comment, but perhaps an important one:

"it is generating revenue & profit, a couple of hundreds a month. Enough for me to cover my hosting expensives, and working less hours at my day job."

It is generating revenue, it is _not_ generating profit. This may seem like a subtle point, but it really isn't. Take the amount of money you make in your 'day' job, add in all the benefits your day job has as well (paid vacation? health care? life insurance?)

You mentioned your wife doesn't want to work at this business, so treat it like a one-person shop. Next you've got a hosting service, do you host on a virtual host? or do you have your own equipment? One of the nice things about things like EC2 and their ilk is that it aggregates a lot of operational costs that you can then consider in bulk (no need to depreciate equipment for example). Presumably you have your own computer (or computers) that you do development on, those you should depreciate because you will replace them as needed.

Take all the money you make from this service, and put that on top. That is your 'top line' revenue. Now take all of these costs operational (hosting), local equipment, your salary, your benefits and that becomes your 'burn' rate or recurring expense. Subtract them from the top line. The ratio of that number (the difference between revenue and cost) and your total revenue is your gross margin. Obviously if its negative you don't have any gross margin.

But if it is negative (and I suspect it will be) work backwards and make revenue a variable 'x' and your gross margin say "20%" Solving for x says your revenue has to be 20% higher than the sum of your costs to maintain a gross margin of 20%.

Now look at your customers, if you have N customers and you charge them x/N Euros per year, will they still use your service? If the answer is "no" then work that one backwards as well, if your N customers are too few, for what n will the price per n be low enough to meet your revenue and margin goal of 20%?

Lets say you figure out that you need another 1000 customers to meet your goals, do a sanity check and ask "Is there really a thousand additional people who might use my service?" If so then you need to reach them, so try to figure out what it will cost to "talk" to them (this takes various forms, going to a trade show where likely customers would go, advertising in a magazine or on a web site where likely customers would be reading/visiting Etc.) How many do you have to talk to before one signs up? One for one? One out of ten? out of twenty?

Anyway, you get the point. Running it as a business is very different than running it as a hobby. I was trying to give you a sense of what you might think about in your question "What next?" to see if you wanted to make your hobby into a business. This can be a winning strategy, if the business is sound, because you already you know doing it is fun (since you started doing it with no expectation of return). Of course you may also find that trying to make a viable business out of it takes all the fun out, and that would be a bad thing.

</comment><comment><USER18> How does this work?

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean? How does what work?

<comment><USER18> lol, I meant Hacker News. Came here for the first time. Then. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Greetings from CA, home of the next big quake!

We are a small startup software/educational company looking for a hot shot programmer. Our idea has HUGE market potential. We have developed an excellent math content curriculum, and a national/possibly international marketing program. Please email me at firstname.lastname@example.com. It is possible an exchange might be fruitful!</comment>


Traffic Engineers Say Slowing Down Will Get You Through a Jam Faster - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/articles/traffic-engineers-say-slowing-down-will-get-you-through-a-jam-faster-1415386073?google_editors_picks=true <comment><USER2> Doesn't take a traffic engineer to figure this out. If you've ever observed a "ghost" traffic jam the source of the problem is very obvious - any one person who stops short will cause the person behind them to stop short, and so on. The problem was never discovering the solution, it's been distribution of the solution.

I'd love to see more rigorous testing done on potential drivers to ensure they are able to drive not only safely, but efficiently. This could mean having a simulator that takes you through a traffic jam. The intent of course being to teach you, not to fail you as soon as possible because you didn't check your mirrors frequently enough.

I think the underlying problem though, is with the instant gratification associated with filling a gap in traffic flow. People feel that because they've filled the gap they've somehow saved a bit of time, when in reality the time saved is negligible for most trips (say 3 seconds in a 30 minute commute or something.) Good luck teaching people that going slower is faster.

Edit: Here's a good explanation. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goVjVVaLe10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goVjVVaLe10)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article. Behind paywall:

[http://online.wsj.com/articles/traffic-engineers-say- slowing...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/traffic-engineers-say-slowing-down- will-get-you-through-a-jam-faster-1415386073)

^Link is full article.

<comment><USER4> Unless I am misunderstanding you, the above link is also behind the paywall, I'm afraid.

<comment><USER3> Ah, that's unfortunate. It wasn't earlier.

I cannot edit my OP, but apologies, that link now leads to a paywall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >To Read the Full Story, Subscribe or Log In</comment>


Show HN: Newsletter for software engineers who are looking for other engineers - <AUTHOR> http://atriangle.github.io <comment><AUTHOR> Two Decembers ago, I slapped together a Github pages site and put a Mailchimp signup form with a brief thought: "Why isn't there a place to showcase software projects to be shown to developers". Over 300 people signed up and then I didn't know what to do.

I was looking for a way for people to share their low-fidelity ideas without any intention of being more than just a project. Whether you have a side- project you want to be a future business, a project that you are hoping will help pay for itself, or just a weekend hack that you want to share and bounce off other people - I wanted to provide a place where the idea can be shared and validated.

I wanted to collect any cool projects that were being talked about at meetups, shared internally at companies, or being worked on and experimented with small groups. I wanted people to have a place where they could validate their ideas without any judgement or expectation for profitability.

The idea was simple, I send out an email every two weeks and ask for people to submit their cool ideas. I expected people would respond with a summary of their project and a way where people could learn more about it. I would summarize the responses each week and send it in the call for cool ideas.

Last time, I didnt have enough responses/time to put this email together. I recently built something that will help simplify this process and want to give it another shot.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You can submit a project here: [https://github.com/atriangle/Projects](https://github.com/atriangle/Projects)</comment>


Amanda Knox and bad maths in court - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22310186

<comment><USER4> Does DNA testing work like that? If so, you'd just build more iterations into the test itself. If they refer to taking another sample, again, for such a critical test, why not take multiple samples? The coin analogy seems misleading as you can flip many times for free, and each flip is (usually) completely independent.

It'd seem a retest would only matter if there's a new test or the previous test was suspected to be improperly done. In any case, you'd need a reason to believe a different outcome is possible.

In this case, a quick search finds[1]. It says evidence and sample procedures were not properly followed, and there wasn't even evidence of blood on the knife.

I'm all for being corrected on statistics, but this doesn't seem like a case of bad math, does it?

1: [http://www.westseattleherald.com/2011/06/29/news/update- dna-...](http://www.westseattleherald.com/2011/06/29/news/update-dna-knife- jailed-amanda-knox-retested-foun)

<comment><USER5> More to the point, even if her blood was on the knife would that necessarily be conclusive evidence? I know that I've left a bit of blood on various cooking knives of people I've lived with.

<comment><USER6> No offense (maybe a giggle) but that seems highly unusual

<comment><USER7> Anyone that isn't a professional chef is probably going to leave a little blood on a knife by cutting themselves with it.

There's a difference between a knife drenched in blood and a tiny bit of blood from a cut, certainly, but as far as forensics goes that may not matter - <USER2> may want to find any evidence of blood, like some blood caught in the space between the handle and the blade, on the assumption that a killer may have tried to clean blood off a weapon.

<comment><USER6> > Anyone that isn't a professional chef is probably going to leave a little > blood on a knife by cutting themselves with it.

That's a strong claim.

I'm not a professional chef but I like to use a chef's knife, and I cut rather fast. Yet I don't remember ever cutting myself to the point of bleeding. I only remember scraping off nails and skin.

> like some blood caught in the space between the handle and the blade

I reckon that if it gets stuck between the handle and the blade then we're talking about more than a little blood.

<comment><USER8> I've cut my fingers deeply with a kitchen knife more than once, and bled profusely.

I rarely cook, but I work on cars a lot. Cutting my hands and fingers is part of the routine. Oddly, such cuts have never gotten infected, even when the dirt gets embedded below the skin. I think car grease is an effective bacteriacide!

(I find wearing gloves while working on a car uncomfortable, though I'll do it when cracking a rusted nut loose - when it finally gives way you'll always bang your hand against something.)

<comment><USER9> That same grease make my cuts all red and inflamed. What gets me is that its rarely jobs that you know will be hard that result in cuts. It's the small simple ones. Switch a ram stick on this beige box, change a set of windscreen wipers. Adjust the temp on the hot water cylinder. Do anything maintenance related to a washing machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And yet the mathematics in the article seems bogus to me, too. Can anyone figure out what calculation Colmez is doing?

I'm not a statistician, but if you toss a _fair_ coin 20 times, there is about 0.1% chance of getting 17 heads, but to figure out the probability _that_ the coin is fair given this data, it seems you need Bayes' theorem, which requires a _prior_ probability on the coin being fair.

<comment><USER11> This is how frequentist statistics works. You ask the wrong question ("the chance of the data occurring given the assumption") and use clean, rigorous, impeccable math to get an answer. Bayesian statistics is (usually) the opposite - you ask the correct question ("the chance of the assumption being correct") but find that there is no way without making some big assumptions to get to the answer.

Here's some good (possibly more "fair" than I've been above) discussion if anyone wants to read/think about this more:

[http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/22/bayesian-and- fre...](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/22/bayesian-and-frequentist- reasoning-in-plain-english)

[http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between- Bayesian...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Bayesian-and- frequentist-statisticians)

<comment><USER12> A concise explanation of the difference between Bayesian and Frequentist techniques in statistics:

<http://xkcd.com/1132/>

<comment><USER11> You know, I didn't understand that comic when it was posted (despite feeling like I have an understanding of Bayesian vs. frequentist statistics) and I still don't. So, I looked it up and apparently I'm not the only one.

It seems to me, and the commenters on stats.stackexchange [1] that this comic both misinterprets frequentist statistics and misrepresents Bayesian statistics. I realize that XKCD is a nerdy comic meant to be entertaining - <USER3> just wanted to leave this discussion here in case anyone else is confused; I think this is an important distinction and one most people interested in statistics should spend some time thinking about.

[1] [http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/43339/whats- wrong-w...](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/43339/whats-wrong-with- xkcds-frequentists-vs-bayesians-comic)

Edit: I can't edit my first comment now, but gweinberg's post (sibling to the grandparent of this) words the problem perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Article on statistics, IDing, and trials from a former professor of mine: <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1432516> (free download).

Also very depressing to read his work on forensics. Long story short, everything in CSI besides DNA evidence is an unscientific sham. And even DNA evidence is dominated by lab error (1-2%). See: lst.law.asu.edu/fs09/pdfs/koehler4_3.pdf.

<comment><USER11> If you know anything about it, how would you/he propose fixing the problem from an institutional perspective?

Section V of that paper suggests that being more precise in language choice (an important problem in statistics) is his main advice there, but perhaps making the data and conclusions open in some "anonymized" form would support this endeavour?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My understanding of the original scene is that the police first on the scene were not very good, so even if the DNA on the knife is hers, one has to think about contamination by the original (postal) police.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Meredith_Kercher#Disc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Meredith_Kercher#Discovery_of_the_body)

</comment><comment><USER15> Math is great for winning court cases. I got pulled over 12 years ago, and went into the magistrate hearing with a drawn out model indicating how the cop was either dangerously speeding himself to pull me over or had inaccurately assessed my speed and bumped up the speed he indicated on my ticket. The lawyer took one look at my sheet full of equations and said "Well, just watch your speed next time." He let me off without any fine and dismissed the case. I would always advise high school students who say "I don't need math" to understand that the world is shifting such that people who know math are becoming very powerful. Especially here in America, where no one would ever admit to being "dumb" and will therefore do anything they can to avoid doing math and looking bad. This is a serious weakness, and can easily be exploited if you ever run into a crafty mathematician.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here is a much better article on the application of probability to the Amanda Knox case: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1j7/the_amanda_knox_test_how_an_hour...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/1j7/the_amanda_knox_test_how_an_hour_on_the_internet/)

</comment><comment><USER17> It will be fascinating to see how this discussion out in a mainly American forum. In very broad terms, the attitude that the Italians seem to have to Knox is similar to the attitude that the Americans had to Woodward, and very much vice versa.

<comment><USER18> For anyone who doesn't know what "Woodward" refers to: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Woodward_case>

<comment><USER19> Stuff like this terrifies me:

"In the days following the verdict it emerged that the jury had been split about the murder charge, but those who had favoured an acquittal were persuaded to accept a conviction."

I just don't understand it. How can a person serving on a jury, with another person's life in their hands, be "persuaded to accept a conviction" when they don't actually believe the defendant is guilty?

<comment><USER20> Watch 12 Angry Men backwards.

<comment><USER21> Funny you bring it up, because from a Bayesian perspective, the main character makes some pretty specious arguments and the final choice to not convict is probably wrong; see [http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2012/11/odds- again-ba...](http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2012/11/odds-again-bayes- made-usable.html) and the excerpts from [http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...](http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2472&context=faculty_scholarship) ("Was He Guilty as Charged? An alternative narrative based on the circumstantial evidence from '12 Angry Men'", Vidmar et al) in <http://studiolo.cortediurbino.org/how-useful-is-bayesianism/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A DNA Test doesn't work like that.

Probability tests do, but not things we label "probability" that aren't. "there is a 25% chance of rain tomorrow" isn't really a 25%. It is a confidence score.

Something people can grasp better than DNA: Let's say you have a partial thumb print in an imaginary murder. You could eliminate suspects who don't have that portion of the thumb print, but you couldn't confirm that the person or people who match did it. Only that the thumbprint is a "Pocked Loop", "Whorl", or "mixed" and so anyone with a "tent Arch" is not the killer.

You can be 100% confident that the print excludes the person with the "Tent Arch" and if you knew there were only 4 people in the room when the victim in our imaginary scenario died you could even go so far as that since only 2 of them have a potential match that you have a 50% confidence in the match. But Running the test 800 times will not get you to a number better than that.

<comment><USER23> Exactly, that's why it helps to have multiple tests with different sensitivities and specificities for ruling people out and in, respectively. Whorls and a grip circumference of 14cm, say

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't like that RFLP analysis is still so common. Practitioners of forensics should genotype a few hundred thousand markers and be done with it. I see that Illumina offers tools for this purpose, in fact: [http://www.illumina.com/applications/forensics.ilmn?sciid=20...](http://www.illumina.com/applications/forensics.ilmn?sciid=2013227IBN1)</comment>


Ask HN: What cities in the US have a growing startup/entrepreneur community? - <AUTHOR>

We're looking to start bringing our Entrepreneurs Unpluggd (http://www.entrepreneursunpluggd.com) events to other cities soon and I've been surprised at the cities that have amazing growing entrepreneur startup scenes (Indianapolis, Kansas City, Des Moines, to name a few). I'm curious what else is out there.<p>Does your city/area have a growing startup/entrepreneur scene/community? Where? <comment><USER2> In Michigan Ann Arbor has a large startup community and ecosystem. Most of the states VC and angel community is in Ann Arbor.

East Lansing has a small but very active and growing community, check out the group Hackers and Hustlers on Facebook. The city of East Lansing sponsors two incubators, a regular one and another which is limited to MSU students.

There are also small communities in Grand Rapids, Midland and Kalamazoo. Grand Rapids just had a lean startup workshop and GVSU has its own YC style incubator.

Kalamazoo just started a Hackers and Hustlers chapter and they've got another group that meets regularly with people doing pitches.

If you're considering coming to Michigan let me know and I will try to help you.

<comment><USER3> May want to add Detroit in there too :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My home area of Boulder, Colorado does. When I left the US 8 years ago, it was a very nice college town with some computer companies, but nothing that exciting that I knew of. Now, there's a Tech Stars (the original, I think), the Foundry group, a ton of software start-ups, biotech companies (some of which existed before to be fair), and even at least one solar power- start-up. Not bad for a town of 100,000!

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard great things about the Boulder scene! Do you know personally of any events that happen on a regular or semi-regular basis and are well attended?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> San Diego has an active and growing community, and there's been a lot of growth in events, meetups, and venues recently. Even the funding community is starting to get its act together.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know! Do you have any links to events, etc.? Would love to learn more about the scene there.

<comment><USER5> SD Tech Scene has a pretty list, and Brant Cooper has a San Diego Startup list email that goes out on Mondays.

<http://www.sdtechscene.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Phoenix and the area around it is actually currently booming with startup activity. Arizona State is supporting a ton of startup efforts, there's a new incubator that just launched and another incubator planning to open it's doors at the end of the summer. It's all very exciting to watch as there didn't use to be much activity at all.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nashville and Austin. Perhaps Austin has been ahead of the curve a bit with SXSW, but Nashville is really starting to take off with healthcare tech.

</comment><comment><USER8> The Triangle area, North Carolina... Durham / Raleigh / RTP / Chapel Hill.

</comment><comment><USER9> Los Angeles is very "stop and go". Something like EU might help.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Stop and go" in the sense that there are lots of good events, then nothing for awhile, then lots of good events again? Trying to understand exactly what you mean by "stop and go".

<comment><USER9> Sorry for being unclear. Lots of action, then dead for a while, a long while, then some action again. As an exercise, just look at how many hacker/entrepreneur/tech scene related meetups there are in LA (hundreds), and how many of those have a meeting planned or have any regular conversation (maybe one or two).

From a start-up point of view, this city lacks structure; if we have a program were every xyz date a program begins and ends then that might help bring an even flow.</comment></comment></comment>


Dustcloud Brings a First-Person Shooter Into the Streets, Without the Killing - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/01/03/dustcloud-brings-a-first-person-shooter-into-the-streets-without-the-killing/

<comment><USER2> So it's like laser tag that you can easily do out in Streets and carry around?</comment>


Altruism on Amazon Mechanical Turk - <AUTHOR> http://blog.doloreslabs.com/2010/01/altruism-on-amazon-mechanical-turk/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if results would be different if cooperation would result in a _loss_ (as opposed to merely smaller reward).

Psychologically, it's much easier to forgo additional reward than to give up what you _already_ have.

People have tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion>

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a very interesting study.

Preachers have known this for years of course, which is why any request to donate is always preceded by a healthy reminder on the benefits of altruism.</comment>


27% of Healthcare Spend Considered "Waste" to Tune of $765 Billion Annually - <AUTHOR> http://zweenahealth.com/stat-27-of-healthcare-spend-considered-waste/

<comment><USER2> A lot of this stems from the fact that health IT systems aren't interoperable. Take a look at Epic Systems (the leading vendor). They code in MUMPS, which predates C as a language.

I'm exploring a startup in data analytics for behavioral health, and there it's even worse. Unlike blood pressure or cholesterol, everything is based on intuition. It's what Vinod Khosla means when he refers to modern medicine as being like witchcraft.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dr. Keith Smith is way cool.

 _Health Care is Actually Really Cheap!_

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zdqp22G_K4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zdqp22G_K4)

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

[http://marketmedicine.org](http://marketmedicine.org)</comment>


Google Enterprise Blog: Store and Share files in the cloud with Google Docs  - <AUTHOR> http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/01/store-and-share-files-in-cloud-with.html

<comment><USER2> Dropbox look-alike?

May be more than that, memeoconnect for Google Apps lets you edit files offline too.</comment>


Kindergarten Science Activities Videos Without the Long Parental Preparations - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/xg7OlPGjadc <comment><AUTHOR> LINK TO THE STORY OF WHY I DO THESE VIDEOS: [https://medium.com/@marialarkworthy/science-activities- for-y...](https://medium.com/@marialarkworthy/science-activities-for-young- kids-73c48c179ea1)</comment>


Windows 8 apps passes 20,000 mark, or does it?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/fuzzy-logic/57629-windows-8-apps-passes-20000-mark-or-does-it? News reports say that the Windows Store in Windows 8 has "20,000 apps", most of which are free, in its global store, but is this really true? <comment><USER2> Love Windows 8, need more apps!</comment>


Ask HN: How many of you built your app on top of a framework and which one - <AUTHOR>

I'm just beginning to develop an idea I've had for a little while. There are lots of generic components to be implemented: MVC, authentication, secure REST API. It seems like it would be best to start with a framework but I can't seem to find one that has these components and yet still feels lightweight. Did you build your app on top of a framework? If so which one if not why not? <comment><USER2> I started working with Django about 6 months ago and have loved it. I had been a long time anti-framework guy, but can't say I have had any huge complaints with Django so far.

I particularly have enjoyed the ORM, although you need to be careful not to get carried away with it. Its easy to create slow queries with it and don't assume it will always get indexes correct.

I have also enjoyed the community around Django. I enjoy being able to search a particular problem and find that someone already has created a Django app to solve it. In my PHP days (RIP) this was possible, but usually ended up being a lot more ugly.

<comment><USER3> Same with me here. I switched from using CakePHP to Django and haven't touched any PHP since. I would highly recommend Django.

With that being said, I think while development without a framework "might" feel more lightweight, you will pay for it later when you're maintaining your app. As they always say, you build it once but you have to maintain it forever. I think investing in a framework will most likely pay off in the future even if there is an overhead usually associated with framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been working with web2py for about 6 months. I was new to Python at the time and it seemed like a framework that could get me pretty far pretty fast. So far it's been fantastic.

I'm building a digital signage application. I'm using web2py on Apache for my serverside control panel/mobile management website. I'm also using web2py on the display side with it's built in webserver.

To tie everything together I'm primarily pushing around JSON via Beanstalk. All other management of the client ends is done via Fabric.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ruby on Rails on top of Heroku on top of Facebook. So it's basically an app framework inside a social framework hosted on a hosting "framework" :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> Django powers most of matchFWD.com

We tend to think that whatever feature we need, we just google django- feature-x and we find a decent implementation. And the community is great.

we like supertagging, django activity-stream, haystack, django-cities, south, sentry, easy-thumbnails, taggit.

We're about to release a few django apps we've made too.

</comment><comment><USER7> I just started building something. I had no experience in any of the web friendly languages before. I was looking for suggestions on frameworks and stumbled upon CodeIgniter (PHP based MVC architecture framework). I have been able to get satisfactory results. I think I might have had a similar level of success had I picked Django or some other f/w.

</comment><comment><USER8> Since I am not a programmer, I started with Drupal. Not bad for what it is. Currently learning Rails and loving it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I started with CodeIgniter for PHP project , works fine but I stumbled in debugging. Dont have easy way to debug.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. Debugging is a PITA in CI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1 with Ruby on Rails and 1 with Pyramid.

</comment><comment><USER11> I also highly recommend Django.

</comment><comment><USER12> Qt,ACE,libcrul,boost,openssl

</comment><comment><USER13> if java then Stripes is lightweight but lots of features</comment>


Journalists protest 100 days of internet gag in Kashmir - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/journalists-protest-100-days-of-internet-gag-in-kashmir-1618315-2019-11-13 <comment><USER2> In case anyone hasn't heard, India essentially bulldozed(and still is) the Kashmir region after stripping the area of its historical rights. Modi and his government have continued to indirectly support the lynching of Muslims all throughout India as well.

They cut the internet for the usual reason, to stop the spread of truthful information out of the area.

Fun stuff going on over there.</comment>


Show HN: Information Security Handbook - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davidbailey/Information_Security_Handbook/releases/tag/2015-12-27_03.50.59 <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing the link to the PDF. I don't have LaTeX/TeX at hand to render it :-)

<comment><USER3> Funnily enough, I'm always wary of downloading PDFs from security experts :-) (so I didn't download this one).

It seems like a good way of getting access to other security experts' data.</comment></comment>


J-core Open Processor - <AUTHOR> http://j-core.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Related story: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101908)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was flagged as a dupe, but it's not:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=J-core%20Open%20Processor&sort...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=J-core%20Open%20Processor&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)</comment>