Justice Department moves to end routine gag orders on tech firms - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-moves-to-end-routine-gag-orders-on-tech-firms/2017/10/23/df8300bc-b848-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html?utm_term=.4f3da68632f5 <comment><USER2> This is good news overall. Glad to see _some_ sanity coming out of the White House.

I'm a little suspicious though. Why is Microsoft pushing so hard for this? What's in it for them?

<comment><USER3> Microsoft has been battling the government over this and more for a long time. They have another major ongoing case over US government rights to demand customer data stored overseas.

> What's in it for them

The very lucrative European business market. If they can't be assured that their data is safe with Microsoft (and out of US govt hands), they will naturally move to using non-US based competitors.

<comment><USER4> At $employer we process lots of PII on behalf of customers which is covered by additional domain-specific privacy laws on top of the general ones.

Compliance is important and because we occasionally have to handle production data inhouse this has far-reaching consequences.

It's not just that we can't use US-based cloud services for production. We can't use them for anything. Anything like slack, gsuite, jira cloud are not suitable for handling the sensitive data. Even something as simple as using recaptcha required vetting by our data protection officer.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, what doesn't AWS comply with? I was under the impression they were certified for almost every use case involving PII.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Starting from May 2018, no US-based company can possibly comply under the strict interpretation of EU data protection laws. If an US court can possibly legally compel you to hand over the data, you cannot host any private data on EU citizens on behalf of an EU company. Next year, I cannot even legally store things like names and email addresses belonging to EU citizens on a server ran by a US company, without exposing myself to major legal liability. Many companies in the EU are now scrambling to get away from us service providers.

The text is very broad, and it has been argued that it's a stealth protectionism measure. For me to be able to do business with US-based cloud providers next year, the US law needs to change so that if an account has a "this refers to an EU citizen" bit set, that completely prevents US courts and law enforcement from acquiring any information about it without proving probable cause at an EU court of a specific crime that is of sufficient severity and criminal in both EU and the US. I don't believe that will happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And I'll append an analysis which says that much more is needed because the new rule applies only to the Justice Dept, and the orders come from many places, including state and local governments:

[https://www.justsecurity.org/46875/modernizing-ecpa- congress...](https://www.justsecurity.org/46875/modernizing-ecpa- congressional-action-dojs-gag-order-guidelines/)

I'll add that a rule changed by the Justice Dept can be changed again. A law may be needed.

<comment><USER6> Both good points. If I may ask, why is MS dropping the case if they had good points to make something come of it?

<comment><USER7> Microsoft sued the Justice Department. I'm not a lawyer, but since the Justice Department is no longer doing this thing, they may not have any standing for the lawsuit. I don't think they can force the lawsuit through to get a decision since they're no longer being harmed by it.

It wouldn't be the first time someone who thought they might lose backed down to avoid setting a precedent. Police departments did it with cases where people challenged the use of Stingrays, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad to see the Trump administration rolling back these Obama era privacy violations.

<comment><USER9> I think that the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 3123(d)(2) were introduced by Bush as part of the Patriot act, after September 11, not by Obama. One might argue that Obama abused them, of course.

<comment><USER8> It's pretty easy to argue abuse when the Obama administration was wiretapping the opposition party just before a presidential election,

[http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/politics/paul-manafort- governm...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/politics/paul-manafort-government- wiretapped-fisa-russians/index.html)

In March the Obama administration denied it for months. Now it is a matter of fact.

<comment><USER10> Criminal investigations are non-partisan. You don't get structural immunity from espionage charges just because you are "of another political party" than the current president. The wiretap was authorized by a judge. The Whitehouse also never denied wiretapping Manafort, but if they HAD done so, it would have been proper. Wiretaps are secret, by their nature. This also occurred _after_ Manafort had been removed from his position on the Trump campaign.

<comment><USER11> >Criminal investigations are non-partisan.

Sniff. I remember when I was young and idealistic.

The Obama administration was clever enough to investigate people _around_ Trump such that they would have pretty much everything he said in the can.

What was highly irregular, and arguably illegal, was Susan Rice at the NSC authorizing the "unmasking" of the people involved as well as a wide intergovernmental distribution. She really had no business doing that, and it effectively leaked every aspect of the investigation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For the record, this does not include National Security Letters.

<comment><USER13> I assume this is a step towards that. As a Canadian, I know for a fact we (as in our tech industry) have a lot of business that would go to the US by default if these letters stopped existing.

Well, maybe not now, the damage is done. But it would've, and in time US tech companies' reputation will be repaired. As a foreigner, it doesn't seem like the repair process has started yet. Hope I'm wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's the outcome Microsoft has deserved my sincere respect for.

</comment><comment><USER15> do these gag orders apply to foreign based subsidiaries of a company based in the US?

</comment><comment><USER16> I'll try to say things in a less sarcastic form.

Americans, the argumentation for interception correspondence and private life perlustration provided by your 3 letter services and whole executive branch in general is laughable.

They talk about busting terror cells, then proceed to dig your personal data on facebook or somebody's very very private Snapchat conversations, as if Osama Bin Laden, with his alleged $ billions in the bank, has nothing else to do than writing a web diary with all his plans exposed in plain sight or sexting with his groupies.

The prime interest of this STASI style mass perlustration are not the so called "terrorists," but your and other citizens private life, and it is laughable for anybody to claim that this is anything other than that.

And it looks even more laughable when somebody goes beyond not only taking that as given, but even tries to insinuate a posh opposition and say to US government "you are not doing the mass domestic espionage in constitutionally correct way, you should do mass surveillance differently" as if mass surveillance can be ever become legal in USA.

Microsoft probably sees and routinely fulfills thousands of data perlustration requests a months, but rather than saying "What you do is fucking illegal, you will get that data only over my dead body," they say "Dear uncle Sam, we have a lot of dirt on you, and in particular the request no. 9877989 with very weak legal argumentation in it, play nicer with us in the future"

<comment><USER17> I hate to have to say it, but besides the 3-letter agencies, all countries and many global companies are spying. Even if the US agencies fixed their behavior, the is still the problem of the rest of the world.

<comment><USER11> I laughed my ass off when, after all the complaining the Germans did about the NSA collecting their PM's phone conversations, it turned out they did the very same thing to Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State travelling in Europe.</comment></comment></comment>


Jagmeet Singh Says He Supports the Decriminalization of All Drugs - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/qvvg9w/jagmeet-singh-says-he-supports-the-decriminalization-of-all-drugs <comment><AUTHOR> Quoting someone else:

> Jagmeet Singh is the first major politician to bring this issue to the > forefront and it happened completely by chance through a single off-hand > question.</comment>


Show HN: How to Mine Bitcoin/Crypto with Ty Walker  Hack Days - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/hackdays4all/videos/568470916831909/ <comment><USER2> Not a bad intro</comment>


Linode: Transfer is $0.10/GB, CPU+RAM+HD is free - <AUTHOR>

Here's an interesting way of looking at Linode's pricing scheme, especially if your app is a data transfer hog.
With most other services, you pay per GB transfered on top of the instance price.
For example, at Rackspace you pay $0.22 (u/l) or $0.08 (d/l) per GB transfered, which goes on top of the instance price, about $44 per GB of RAM.
At Linode, you get 400GB of transfer included in a 1GB RAM instance.
Or, looking at it from a different angle, at $40 an instance, that's $0.10 per GB transfered, pretty much the same rate as other services (the rate remains at $0.10 if you need more than what's included).
If you notice that $0.10/GB is roughly the standard rate for transfers across all cloud hosting services, at Linode you are basically getting the physical instance (CPU, RAM, HD) for "free".
DISCLOSURE: I am not by any means affiliated with Linode, Rackspace, or any other cloud hosting service. I'm simply a customer with a probably not-so-exciting epiphany. <comment><USER2> Except, if I don't use 400GB of transfer, I still pay $40, right? So then, my CPU+RAM+HD doesn't seem free anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I said, the point of view is particularly useful for data transfer hogs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's bickering over pennies though. If $40 scares you you're in 'hobby' territory. For $150 you can get a flat rate 100 MBit connection, including a machine. That's 4 times as much dough, but it gives you 32400 Gbit/month, or, by your math, $3200 worth of 'value'.

Measured traffic is nice for bits & pieces. Flat rate is pretty much the only way to go if you're using a lot of bandwidth.

<comment><AUTHOR> The savings scale with transfer, it's not just an overhead. You save $40 _per 400GB transfered_. That affects deployments of any size.

What service offers unlimited 100 MBit connection for $150/mo, including machine?

<comment><USER3> > What service offers unlimited 100 MBit connection for $150/mo, including > machine?

[http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/unmetered- serie...](http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/unmetered- series/configurator/924)

Gigabit goes for a bit more, but effectively that's half the price of the 100Mbit connections:

[http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/unmetered- serie...](http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/unmetered- series/configurator/930)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I run a voice chat hosting service on Linode that tends to be quite bandwidth- heavy, and I noticed this a while ago. I don't need a lot of RAM per machine, so I've got a whole bunch of 512 instances scattered around their various data centers; all purchased bandwidth is pooled, so even if a node goes over its allocation, I don't pay extra unless I exceed 200gb * number of leased nodes across all nodes in a given billing period. That's made it very easy to make a decision between horizontal or vertical scaling; they're the same cost, but horizontal scaling gets me better geographic coverage.

I do wish Linode had some sort of plan for extra bandwidth that was more cost- effective than just purchasing another node outright, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the FAQ: "If you believe you will have overages consistently, you can purchase additional transfer or upgrade to the next plan level. Purchasing additional transfer ahead of time is $0.10/GB, otherwise overages are $0.15/GB."

<http://www.linode.com/faq.cfm>

<comment><AUTHOR> My point is though, why would you pay for additional GB only, if you can also get a node for "free"?

You can improve the performance of your app by deploying more memcached nodes, for example.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. If I think I'll have overage, I can purchase 200gb of bandwidth for $20, or I can purchase another node for $20, which includes 200gb of pooled bandwidth. In my case, whenever, I need more bandwidth, I get more for my money by just purchasing a whole new node.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your math is wrong on all levels.

Let me take this to the extreme: at 100TB.com you get 100TB of transfer for $201,15, which according to your math equals to $0.002 per GB plus free dedicated server. However, if you don't use 100TB, but only 10GB (which is quite enough for most of the websites) then using Amazon S3 you would pay $1,50... And even if you would use 1TB (which is quite a lot) then you would pay $150 for the S3...

...in the end $0.15 turns out cheaper than $0.002 most of the time ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice to know about 100TB.com.

As I said, the math makes sense if your app is a data transfer hog (> 1TB/mo).

As to Amazon, I suppose you meant EC2? (S3 is a data store). If you use 1TB at EC2 for $0.15/GB, that's $150 for data transfer _only_ , on top of the instance usage price.

At Linode, if you use that 1TB, you pay less for that transfer ($100), _and_ you get a free instance.

How's this so "wrong on all levels"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What happens if that Linode instance goes down? With Amazon you pay 15cents a GB but you get a lot more reliability for your money.</comment>


If you want to be truly intimidating... - <AUTHOR> http://jhnmyr.tumblr.com/post/13865661961/if-you-want-to-be-truly-intimidating-if-you-want

<comment><USER2> I was seconds away from updating my status with a quote from that entry... then I saw it was from John Mayer and I realized how much grief and sarcasm I'd get for having posted and linked to the source.

The sad thing is, I like a lot of his music so the fact that I was truly intimidated by posting a link by him for fear of what my friends might think of me probably says more about me than it does him (and perhaps speaks to a bit to why Rdio and Spotify had to add privacy controls). Oh well! I'm intimidated by music snobs, I guess. I'll be intimidating another time.

<comment><USER3> Don't know much about Mayer, but found it interesting that he deleted the post honoring Steve Jobs after SJ's biography came out and he was quoted as saying that Mayer was "out of control".

[http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/ld6th/john_mayer_on_s...](http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/ld6th/john_mayer_on_steve_jobs/)

That's a strange thing to do.

<comment><USER4> He has a habit of deleting almost all of the posts on his tumblr. When he started the account, he actually said he was only going to have one or two posts up at any one time. It's kind of surprising the number he's got up now (although they're almost all photos). The Jobs tribute post could have been deleted out of spite, but he's deleted some other really cool stuff too, so I kinda doubt it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a big hype a while back about how people just wanted to keep it "real". And they would say all kinds of things that, while possibly true, possibly honest, were not constructive or helpful. I love this word "sincere" because it means honest but with a connotation of construction and well- intention. I think if you want to pick whether to be honest or sincere the latter will probably take you a lot further, other things held equal.

<comment><USER6> I've been amazed how in the US being sarcastic and stretching it to the limit - specially in work places - was seen as "the norm" and "how you should be".

The result is that very few people trust very few people (and that trust is not very large, its more of a way 'i know this guy who do XX because I have leverage').

That's sad. Working in a sincere environment, with good values, is so much better on so many accounts. And it also pays off. Have courage. Be sincere.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely, and sometimes sincerity is so unanticipated in certain situations that it may be interpreted as some kind of ploy.

But I agree with the post. It's worth it to be sincere. Even when those around you may not be expecting it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm all for being sincere in business. But with girls? Let's be real here ...

<comment><USER9> Have you tried it? It's about the best strategy I've found. It's scary as hell but it works well.</comment></comment>


Basecamp, now with more vroom - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1819-basecamp-now-with-more-vroom

<comment><USER2> Having faster CPUs and removing the Virtualization layer, your results are as expected. With the exact hardware you will have better results without the virtualization layer. Virtualization is not about performance. If you're moving to a cloud (vps/virtualized hardware) infrastructure take into consideration, there's no exact equivalent on the cloud/shared environment.

<comment><USER3> Virtualization: it's not about performance, it's about provisioning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did they test the hardware by putting it in production or did they run a series of benchmarking tests (so that the experiment can be duplicated)?

<comment><USER5> From my understanding of the article, it looks like they added the new machines into their cluster and directed a higher percentage of traffic to them (to account for the 8 cores instead of 4 cores being used in the virtual machines).

<comment><USER6> That's exactly right. I'm not a big believer in synthetic benchmarks, and I'm not concerned with repeatability of my experiments. The purpose of my test was to determine, for our specific workload, how much of a difference we would see if we went to dedicated hardware -- and even further, what is the difference between a couple of very specific hardware configurations with that workload. I think it accomplished that nicely.

<comment><USER4> _The purpose of my test was to determine, for our specific workload,_

Define "specific workload". The workload depends on how many users are using the system, what parts of the website they're hitting (some may require more backend processing than others), etc.

By not telling us the specifics and by killing the repeatability of this benchmark, you can only say with a minimal amount of certainty that the dedicated hardware improved performance.

I love how the industry functions on magic, whether it's on the software or hardware side.

<comment><USER7> > By not telling us the specifics and by killing the repeatability of this > benchmark, you can only say with a minimal amount of certainty that the > dedicated hardware improved performance.

I can agree that this test only has a small amount of certainty that actual performance of the application was higher on the new hardware. So what? It's is possible to use correlated metrics, such as engagement, time on site, and pageviews per user to determine if the move was "successful".

37signals' end goal was most likely to -improve user experience-. If you can confidently say that a valid random sample of users on A servers have a better experience than those on B servers, raw speed numbers don't matter.

I guess my point is: Test everything on your own. In the end, it's your users happiness that matters the most, not server speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do people virtualize the hardware and OS? Shouldn't it be a software architectural thing? That's why we have web clusters, load balancers, content- based caches, database clusters, distributed hash tables etc and not big iron mainframe style partitions. Look at Google!

I am slightly biased against this as I run a large ESX deployment with about 100 virtual hosts. Performance sucks compared to native and it purely shifts the management effort from one concern to another saving a grand total of nothing. Blades however have some credibility.

Usually by now someone mentions security to which a certain Mr Theo De Raadt concisely debunks:

"x86 virtualization is about basically placing another nearly full kernel, full of new bugs, on top of a nasty x86 architecture which barely has correct page protection. Then running your operating system on the other side of this brand new pile of shit. You are absolutely deluded, if not stupid, if you think that a worldwide collection of software engineers who can't write operating systems or applications without security holes, can then turn around and suddenly write virtualization layers without security holes."</comment>


A selfish request to companies - <AUTHOR> http://lucaschi.com/aselfishrequest.html

<comment><USER2> If a company is paying for the servers, they may have a claim for the after hours side projects of their employees. Depends on specific situation obviously.

Better to pay for your own servers. My $.02.

<comment><USER3> A good salary is better than any of these hack perks.</comment></comment>


Visualizing performance from the server logs - <AUTHOR> http://olegkikin.com/performance/

<comment><USER2> Good approach. Any chance of your sharing the code used to generate these graphs from the %D-formatted Apache logs?

</comment><comment><USER3> Prompted me to run a quick version over our weblogs. You rapidly end up with big black splodges if you squish the time axis. I overcame this by multiplying the pixel colour by 0.8 for each hit to get a heatmap-style image.

Example images (first one on simple db hits; second one shows both fragment cached and non-cached page generation): <http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/7290/logdots2.png> and <http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/4869/logdots1.png> (DOS at around 6pm)

Takes around 2 mins on a pentium D (!) to generate both graphs from a single webserver's daily log, approx 1.3M log lines. I thought it would take much longer given the read/set requirement for each dot, so I'm pleasantly surprised.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very nice. Interesting how the horizontal tiers in the black are stable across traffic changes (with one exception). I presume we are seeing several different types of queries combined.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nicely done, a good clean approach utilising current logs so no increase on server overheads by running the app, that I can tell.</comment>


OCamlEditor - <AUTHOR> http://ocamleditor.forge.ocamlcore.org/ <comment><USER2> Anyone wants to work on real, used-in-production OCaml code, take a look at the various libguestfs virt tools:

[https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/v2v](https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/v2v)

[https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/builder](https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/builder)

[https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/customi...](https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/customize)

[https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/resize](https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/resize)

[https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/sparsif...](https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/sparsify)

[https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/sysprep](https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/tree/master/sysprep)

One great no-nonsense feature of OCaml is that you can just link programs directly to C code, include a tiny C wrapper, and call straight into C with virtually no overhead (literally no overhead for functions that don't need to allocate on the OCaml heap).

</comment><comment><USER3> [meta]

Nothing at all against OCaml, but it puzzles me where these HN micro-fads _come from_. There have inexplicably been a surge in OCaml posts on the front page over the past week.

Which is perfectly fine, except that I haven't gotten around yet to learning Rust (i.e. last month's fad). I'm still busy digging into Go (i.e. the fad from six months ago), having grown bored with Scala (i.e. ancient history, at least a year or two).

It is always exciting to see the fad spotlight shine on a mature language, since reaching production-ready status is usually the point at which languages stop being cool. However, the Haskell surge also rolls back around every few months, and they seem to think that OCaml isn't "pure" enough. So what to do?

Are these short-lived bubbles the result of coordinated HN ranking manipulation, or do brief convergences of interest just spontaneously bubble up by coincidence?

[/meta]

<comment><USER4> I don't think OCaml is a fad. It's a great language, probably my favorite, but it has so many problems that most people don't/can't/won't use it for any kind of real-world problems.

To list just the main problems:

\- f*-up licence (open-source, but modifications can only be distributed as source-code patches)

\- non-concurrent runtime (because the original developers don't care about it)

\- ambiguous syntax which masks bugs

\- inconsistent and incomplete standard library (there are replacements, but they too suck)

\- shitty REPL (at least on Windows)

Well, that's about it. It's really fast, safe, expressive, as functional as it gets ([EDIT] also: compiled). Definitely one of the better-designed languages, and a great starting point for many other languages (F#, Swift, Rust).

Lately, there has been a lot interesting development that eased development in OCaml (basic overloading, this IDE), and more seems to be coming (concurrent GC/runtime).

<comment><USER5> This caught my attention...

\- ambiguous syntax: care to give a few examples?

\- inconsistent & incomplete standard library: the library that comes with the compiler is basically the library of the compiler. Opam probably has everything you need.

\- shitty REPL. use utop or use emacs. Anyway, I do think people on windows are better of using F#. But that's another discussion.

<comment><USER4> This is an nice example I put together about the ambiguous syntax:

      if a > 0 then
        print_endline "a > 0" ;
        match a with
          | 0 -> print_endline "impossible"
          | 2 ->
            match b with
              | 0 -> print_endline "2, 0"
              | _ -> print_endline "2, not 0"
          | 3 -> print_endline "3, something"
          | _ -> print_endline "something, something"
      ;
      print_endline "done"

You can see the rest of the discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8497740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8497740)

OPAM saves lives, that's true, but one still wishes there was a nice library of standard data structures; I use Batteries, which inherit the inconsistency of the standard library (for the sake of compatibility), the other real alternative is Core, which is undocumented.

<comment><USER6> I agree about the standard data structures, but there is no getting around the fact that it's not going to happen. You could have a look at Containers[1] if you want a break from Batteries.

1: [https://github.com/c-cube/ocaml- containers](https://github.com/c-cube/ocaml-containers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> OCaml and its ecosystem are becoming so enticing day by day I feel like I am running out of excuses not to dive in NOW :-)

Obviously it's extremely powerful in many different domains. But one particular area I am interested in is mobile app development. Google search shows OCaml indeed has libs/tools for writing and compiling apps. I am curious about what's the current status and experience in using OCaml in Android/iOS development.

<comment><USER8> I think one of the most realistic options would be to explore F# on Xamarin, if you are willing to pay the indie subscription fee (for Xamarin, that is).

F# is a superset of OCaml (well maybe not very strictly speaking but practically for all intents and purposes). Xamarin is gaining a lot of traction as a platform for writing native apps that deploy to Android and iOS.

Personally I have very good experiences with both the language and the platform, I would recommend you check it out.

<comment><USER9> That is not entirely true, there is some overlap but also enough distinct features on the language level to make a difference. For example object oriented features in OCaml are quite different, OCaml has a more powerful module system (functors), it has open polymorphic variants, extensible syntax. F# has also a number of features that Ocaml hasn't, but it is definitely not true that one is the superset of the other.

The runtime situation is arguably also a matter of preference, Ocaml compiles down to fairly efficient machine code and has a well tuned garbage collector, whereas F# at least initially had to rely on a garbage collector that was tuned for a different use case.

<comment><USER8> You give a very clear overview of the differences between the languages and I agree it is important to stress that there are significant differences between the two. The OP mentions mobile development though and if the goal is to ship apps targeting iOS and Android, it is not going to be practical to use OCaml- hence my suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish i could try this editor but had no luck compiling it. Some troubles with deps (lablgtk) and then infinite compile cycle issue i could not resolve. Would be nice to have deps included in install script or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Usually it is a lot easier to try out OCaml applications using OPAM than building by hand, if your platform has OPAM available.

What OS/distribution are you using? Also what compiler version, apparently it requires OCaml = 4.01: [https://github.com/ocaml/opam- repository/pull/537#issuecomme...](https://github.com/ocaml/opam- repository/pull/537#issuecomment-23628104)

<comment><USER10> Ubuntu 14.04. I used opam to install lablgtk ( before that installed gtk+2.0 ) also installed xml-light with opam and then got infinite loop when compiling. Ocaml 4+

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you run this before building?: eval `opam config env` I tried this Dockerfile and it succeeded, maybe compare your steps with the ones below. If it still doesn't work try moving this discussion to stackoverflow or the OCaml mailing list and provide the output when the infinite loop happens.

      FROM ubuntu:trusty
      RUN apt-get -y update && apt-get -y install opam aspcud && opam init -y
      RUN apt-get install -y m4 libexpat1-dev libgtk2.0-dev
      RUN opam install -y ocamleditor

<comment><USER10> "opam install -y ocamleditor" finally did the trick ) thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sincerely this project should be moved to GitHub and a milestone for modernisation should be created (eg: port it to 4.02, add a plugin system to ease integration with code analysis and build tools, etc).

Currently the only active developer (according to logs) is the original creator of the project, while the project has potential to be maintained by the community.

Add to it a native graphics support for OS X, a decent documentation and suddenly you have a dream IDE.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is on github too: [https://github.com/ftovagliari/ocamleditor](https://github.com/ftovagliari/ocamleditor)</comment></comment>


Make Self-Care Your Competitive Advantage - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/our-6-must-reads-to-make-self-care-your-competitive-advantage/ <comment><USER2> > The term "self-care" gets thrown around a lot these days, and is often used > to describe getting enough sleep and exercise, eating clean, maybe throwing > in some meditation for good measure. And yes, all of those things are good > and helpful for keeping your mind and body on track. But we want to offer a > more expansive definition. Self-care is about harnessing your energy for > productive good.

Chalk up another life-improvement method being co-opted by neoliberal ideology, similar to the wholehearted embrace and corruption of mindfulness by corporations who want to extract as much value from their employees as possible[0]. Life is about so, so much more than productivity optimization.

[0] [http://www.salon.com/2015/09/27/corporate_mindfulness_is_bul...](http://www.salon.com/2015/09/27/corporate_mindfulness_is_bullsht_zen_or_no_zen_youre_working_harder_and_being_paid_less/)

<comment><USER3> Yeah I'm with you on this, the moment we call self-care a "competitive advantage" it stops being self-care entirely and reverts to just being another "productivity hack"

<comment><USER4> We are all Homo Œconomicus tending to our self capital.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is not what self-care is at all. Self-care is about recognizing how you feel, understanding why you feel that way, and taking action based on how you feel instead of allowing yourself to be a victim of your context.

</comment><comment><USER6> This article is thinly veiled PR trash. Every single link is to another article on the same website + a LinkedIn profile for the author.

Create an artificial problem, appoint a guru who can solve it, profit, rinse, repeat.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Self-care on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- care](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-care)</comment>


Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-accounts-on-suspicion-no-crime-required.html?referrer=

<comment><USER2> Discussion from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8509500](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8509500)</comment>


23 devices my iPhone has replaced - <AUTHOR> http://www.devost.net/2009/06/18/23-devices-my-iphone-has-replaced/ <comment><USER2> I wonder what he was playing in PSP/DS before replacing them with the iPhone.

<comment><USER3> Like a good portion of the list, that would fall under the heading of "things my iPhone isn't very good at, but if I'm carrying it anyway I'll put up with the inferior quality, features, availability and/or experience". Just don't tell the iPhone fanboys that they're pragmatically compromising and accepting anything less than the very best, the cognitive dissonance may kill them.

A quick rescan shows maybe two or three entries where the iPhone is a full replacement, though of course this depends on your actual needs and wants. The original list actually calls out a few functions where it turns out it hasn't actually replaced the other device, even for him.</comment></comment>


Tumblr. "Full Disclosure" or Why I Hate Reporting - <AUTHOR> http://homakov.blogspot.com/2012/06/tumblr-full-disclosure.html

<comment><USER2> Great catch as always. I wish you'd included a tag so we could see how your post is spreading.</comment>


Scalable and Sustainable Deep Learning via Randomized Hashing - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.08194 <comment><USER2> They used CPU for both sparse and dense approach. It would be interesting to see price/performance comparision for dense GPU vs sparse CPU, especially as more specialized architectures for dense matrix operations are coming out

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like a github repo here for this paper: [https://github.com/rdspring1/LSH_DeepLearning](https://github.com/rdspring1/LSH_DeepLearning)

</comment><comment><USER4> Locality sensitive hash is well known technique for approximate nearest search and dimensions reduction. Combining it with dnn may reduce the complexity of the dataset. But I don't know if in this setting the parameters of the lsh are learnable via backprop?

</comment><comment><USER5> Url changed from [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170601135633.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170601135633.htm), which points to this.</comment>


JVM Mechanics - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/120533011

<comment><USER2> Interesting presentation showing java to assembly and back again. When can the optimiser kick in and when does it need to back off.

Code samples showing behaviour in the matching github

[https://github.com/dougqh/jvm-mechanics/](https://github.com/dougqh/jvm- mechanics/)</comment>


Why I'm selling WeddingLovely, my 8yr old company (with $62,000 revenue in 2017) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@limedaring/why-im-selling-weddinglovely-my-eight-year-old-company-with-62-000-revenue-in-2017-69fb56c8929f <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

Way back in the day when I first working on what'll become WL, I wrote about my experiences learning to code and posted it here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2227770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2227770)

It's been a fun, rocky, educational, stressful, and amazing few years, and I feel like it's time to pass it on to someone new.

I wrote this post with ALL the details (which are fun to read on their own, even if you're not interested in a weddings-based business). I hope you find it interesting!

</comment><comment><USER2> _" Having someone passionate at the helm has transformed the business and a huge sign to me that I needed to find a buyer for the business to replace my role as CEO."_

"Passion" has been getting a bad rep (maybe because of "follow your passion" trope), but when you're running a business, it really helps to be passion about the topic, or the customers.

Lack of passion is a great reason to sell a business: if there's someone else out there that loves the wedding industry, it's clear this would be a good fit for them. Being excited about the product especially helps when you're promoting and marketing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right? I talked a bit in IndieHackers about this ([https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/failing-to-find-a- dev...](https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/failing-to-find-a-developer- and-building-the-product-myself-5029985845)) — 2017 was our best year ever because I hired someone to manage the business (she's a part of the current team). Having someone make decisions who is excited and enthusiastic has been a _major_ part in WL's current growth. I should have hired her way earlier.</comment></comment>


Xobni (YC S06) launches 2nd business model in 3 months - Xobni Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://www.xobni.com/blog/2009/11/02/introducing-xobni-enterprise-including-salesforce-com-sharepoint-ldap-more/

<comment><USER2> Interesting to see their growth. I absolutely love the xobni free client. I'd have Plus if Corporate would pay for it. Enterprise could probably be sold to them easily.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good rep for Penn State!</comment>


Ask HN: Mentioning apps I've written using scraped data during job interviews? - <AUTHOR> I've a football app I've built over the past ~4 years that utilises data from a variety of sources, all "illegally" obtained. Football data is impossible to obtain as a student any other way..
The backend parts and client itself are my best work, and as I'm going into my first interviews here soon I'd really like to show it off as a portfolio piece. Some of the features I'm most proud of recreating are completely tied to the content, live player heatmaps for example so it's hard to piece it out into more appropriate contexts.
I'll be interviewing for iOS positions at more hack friendly, startup-y, smaller places if that makes sense, only one traditional company. Going to play it by ear while I'm in there obviously, but I'm wondering if maybe I'm worrying too much ahead of time? Is this more common than I think? <comment><USER2> It's good. Show your app.

When you talk about it, don't use words like "illegal" or "scraping" or "illegally obtained". Really, no need to insist on that ^^

</comment><comment><USER3> only if they point blank ask, you could just say you "worked with" an outside company to get the data. They don't have to know that "worked with" meant scrape off their site.

<comment><USER3> Also, you might want to take that app down if it's in prod. "You don't want nasty letters from lawyers."

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good, thank you! And it's only installed on mine and a few friend's devices, should be ok

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You are almost certainly worrying too much.</comment>


Redily, Redis GUI - <AUTHOR> Redily is a cross-platform, free Redis GUI Client. The client supports clusters & sentinels, SSL/TLS encrypted connections and SSH tunneling. It is compatible with most Redis solutions hosted by cloud providers such as Azure Redis Cache, Amazon Elasticache, Google Memorystore, Redis Labs, Bitnami VM images and more. Finding and filtering keys is fast and intuitive, you can search using patterns and visualise the results in a list or tree view. After a search, you can click on any key to start editing it in the key editor, currently supporting Strings (monaco), Sets, Lists, Hashes and Sorted Sets. If you are interested, please check it out at redily.app <comment><USER2> If this is your project, consider submitting it to Show HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's my project, thanks for the suggestion, I just posted there. Cheers</comment></comment>


GOG hoax: "we could not miss a chance to generate some buzz" - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/09/22/gog-com-apologise-for-hoax-closure/

<comment><USER2> Genius, you guys are seriously underestimating how good this will be for them in the long run.

Everyone here has now heard of them, most of you probably felt a lost opportunity when you found out what they offered and now you couldn't have it anymore. Well surprise!

Robert Cialdini would be proud.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would love to hear the discussion that took place when they decided how to announce the upgrades to their site. Not a fancy splash page like Blizzard or CCP, not a traditional marketing e-mail, but closing their doors and telling their customers to get lost. And then, psyche!

At least they understand what people want from gaming products (no DRM). Another example of what not to do in marketing.

<comment><USER4> For a digital distribution service that depends so much on consumer trust that their purchased content will still be available well into the future, this is even more puzzling...

Why even hint at the idea that you may one day shut down and remove access to purchased content? Surely there are ways to build hype without eroding trust in your brand and angering your audience.

<comment><USER5> The entire selling point for this site is that they sell DRM free games.

Since the games are DRM free, you never have to worry about the publisher, or anyone else, pulling servers offline and making the games unplayable.

GOG can go out of business the day after you purchase and you still have the games you already bought and downloaded.

They're not a game backup service. They're a game store. Once you've bought and downloaded your games, you can make your own backups; you don't rely on them to keep anything available forever.

<comment><USER4> That is true, but I think many people still use GOG as a backup service simply because it is convenient. In my opinion this is a big selling point for digital distribution, DRM or not.

I personally own a few games on GOG but currently don't have local copies of any. When I saw the notice on their website and assumed they were gone I briefly thought I would never be able to get a legimate copy of the games I bought. One could argue that it's my own fault for not backing them up myself, but still...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the end of the article, where they say that they don't like GOG for doing this for buzz alone, and then announce the interview coming up.

</comment><comment><USER7> I had not heard of them before.

<comment><USER8> And in 8 hours time, I will have forgotten them, instead of picking up an old classic that caught my eye right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly? I'll still buy from them.

<comment><USER10> The nice thing about no DRM is that I'm not buying a relationship, I'm buying a product. I can just archive the bucket o' bits I receive and they can turn full-on evil in the future for all I care.

There's some rumor that the "no DRM" thing may be going away, or at least modified; the original announcement left the door open to that possibility. That does change the calculus a bit.

I will be disappointed if DRM comes in (and by "disappointed" I mean "not a customer"). Some people were claiming that if you poke around the torrent sites you can't easily find torrents of these games. I didn't verify that, but an enterprising journalist or blogger looking for a good post may consider verifying that before they come back with DRM. "Publishers stupidly insist on DRM even when the game is demonstrably not being pirated" would be a great post. (But I'd definitely verify first.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Preventing users from downloading the games they paid for, and bringing down all the user-generated content in the forums, was not good buzz. Seriously, you should never take down other people's content (the forums) without warning.

</comment><comment><USER12> They're taking a page from T-Shirt Hell PR book - those guys even made it to the Techcrunch post.

Good move in any case. Will attract new people who would never known about them before.

</comment><comment><USER13> Faking your own death for fun and profit. Classy.

I don't think looking dishonest and irresponsible is a good marketing strategy in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER14> Any publicity != good publicity

<comment><USER15> In this case it most certainly WAS good for them.

<comment><USER14> what... why? how?

they got a bunch of negative publicity that proves they are immature and untrustworthy

<comment><USER15> Before this I had never heard of them, and now I'm a paying customer. And I am not alone.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: StreetEYE, all the top financial market news in one click - <AUTHOR> http://www.streeteye.com Some people have called StreetEYE 'HN for investors', but it's a little different.
You can go to Bloomberg, Reuters, WSJ, FT and hit a page with the most-read stories, but now everyone shares everything on social networks and blogs, so we can try to make one page with the most popular news across all sites and blogs - find the top people who share news, and combine algorithmic, professional, and crowdsourced curation to make the best front page across financial media.
StreetEYE is more like a mashup of HN, Techmeme, Google News, Flipboard, Buzzfeed.
For now, no comments or submissions to avoid spam, but will add them.
A longer manifesto here - http://blog.streeteye.com/blog/2013/10/the-streeteye-manifesto/
Been around for a couple of years in various iterations, has a bit of traction among financial journos/twitterati.
Never submitted before because the typical HN reader is not the target, but just did a relaunch and there was a lot of interest in this thread where it was mentioned - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6844565
Other sites in similar space http://boredbanker.com http://filll.com http://www.realclearmarkets.com/ http://www.businessinsider.com/clusterstock/thehive http://www.usv.com for VC (of course) http://www.trejdify.com for broader business news
Would love to hear  feedback, suggestions, any issues let me know! Be gentle, still MVP/POC.
Platform is Django on back end, Bootstrap + crude jQuery on front end. It's not an x86 emulator/Riemann hypothesis solver in Javascript/Haskell but it's been a fun project and I hope people find it useful.
If it has product/market fit, would look to build a team, do a startup accelerator. <comment><AUTHOR> Creator / submitter here - Some people have called StreetEYE 'HN for investors', but it's a little different.

You can go to Bloomberg, Reuters, WSJ, FT and hit a page with the most-read stories, but now everyone shares everything on social networks and blogs, so we can try to make one page with the most popular news across all sites and blogs - find the top people who share news, and combine algorithmic, professional, and crowdsourced curation to make the best front page across financial media.

StreetEYE is more like a mashup of HN, Techmeme, Google News, Flipboard, Buzzfeed. Basically the goal is to make the best flippin' front page of the financial Intertubes, by all means necessary.

For now, no comments or submissions to avoid spam, but plan to add them.

A longer manifesto here - [http://blog.streeteye.com/blog/2013/10/the- streeteye-manifes...](http://blog.streeteye.com/blog/2013/10/the-streeteye- manifesto/)

Been around for a couple of years in various iterations, has a bit of traction among financial journos/twitterati.

Never submitted before because the typical HN reader is not the target, but did an October relaunch, and there was a lot of interest in this thread where it was mentioned - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6844565](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6844565)

Other sites in similar space

[http://boredbanker.com](http://boredbanker.com)

[http://filll.com](http://filll.com)

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

[http://www.businessinsider.com/clusterstock/thehive](http://www.businessinsider.com/clusterstock/thehive)

[http://www.usv.com](http://www.usv.com) for VC (of course)

[http://www.trejdify.com](http://www.trejdify.com) for broader business news

Would love to hear feedback, suggestions, any issues let me know! Please be gentle, still MVP/POC!

Platform is Django on back end, Bootstrap + crude jQuery on front end.

It's not an x86 emulator/Riemann hypothesis solution in Javascript/Haskell but it's been a fun project and I hope people find it useful.

If it has product/market fit, would look to build a team, do a startup accelerator.

druce (at) streeteye.com

<comment><USER2> Druce,

Congratulations on the re-launch, the site looks good and definitely one I'll be keeping an eye on, especially since I likely fall into being part of the target market being in the Capital Markets space.

My one main bit of feedback would be that you might want to broaden your sources to include more in-depth financial sources - right now it feels more like "business news" than it does "finance/financial markets news". To pick an example, I'd be more interested in stories like "Former HSBC Banker to Start Hedge Fund Investing Globally" than I am "Secret Handshakes Greet Frat Brothers on Wall Street" to pick two stories on Bloomberg at the moment. I want to hear the stories about what various hedge funds are up to, what's going on at Goldman's Structured Products desk, etc.

My two eurocents anyway!

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome, many thanks! There is a natural tendency for sort of adverse selection towards virality...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like this and would probably use it. I find that a lot of these sites like Bloomberg or Yahoo Finance are a mess of linkbait, intrusive ads, and auto- playing videos. Could you include market stats like Dow Jones, NASDAQ, etc? I'd be looking for that if this were my one stop shop for financial news.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks, will keep in mind... certainly the latest indexes are not too hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 3 of the 7 links above the fold are about bitcoin...

</comment><comment><USER5> I would consider changing the look of the up-vote buttons.

They're obviously not, but my first thought was that they were somehow related to Facebook.

<comment><USER6> Those stood out to me as the first design element I'd change, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looking good. Love the new design. Gennady

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Gennady!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a REST API for this (perhaps with keywords, images, etc all available thru it)?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a basic REST API, basically the tastypie Django plugin. If you (or anyone) wants to try to do something cool with it, would be happy to explore it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> From a visual/usability perspective, I'd focus on getting a mobile layout.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks code_duck - is anything horribly broken and which device?

It's Bootstrap 3.0 but which in theory is 'mobile-first' but haven't done the work to make sure it's responsive and works on all devices.

There is an iPad app in the app store for what it's worth but it's an early beta... welcome any comments/suggestions.

<comment><USER6> It displays without error, as far as I can see, but is just like the desktop site. One can zoom in on the center column of stories, but it was a little clunky on mobile Safari. And then, you can't see the vote icons or thumbnails without horizontal scrolling.

Bootstrap will make it easy to adapt to smaller screen, but one still must choose the appropriate classes for elements and build the layout knowing how bootstrap handles that ( something I've been learning recently).

I'd suggest adding breakpoints to handle iphone/small android at least - current layout is probably okay for tablets. Mainly the twitter box needs to disappear and I'd suggest making the voting/icons section and titles switch to being more compact or above each other rather than online,

<comment><USER6> 'inline.', that is, not 'online,'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> congrats on the relaunch Druce. i'll echo the comment of having market trading data would be an interesting add.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks, will keep in mind...

also thanks for the mention in that last thread!

Druce - (12 years of LFNY and the bac to prove it LOL)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to learn Clojure - <AUTHOR>

I come from a Rails background and I've caught an interest in Clojure. Seems like a great way to scale rails.<p>How do I best get started with Clojure? Can anyone point me to tutorials/videos/books and such? <comment><USER2> You'll have lots of fun picking up Clojure. I'd recommend 'Clojure programming' by Chas Emerick... or 'Programming Clojure' by Stuart Halloway.. to get started and then 'The Joy of Clojure' by Fogus. My advice would be to not immediately get bogged down by taking on a large project (like an existing rails app) if you don't already have some experience with functional programming. You'll have a much nicer perspective on the Clojure way of doing things after you work through those books.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, thanks. I'll definitely look into it.

Is there some online tutorials as well? Scala has Scalatra for example, which is a great way to get started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I liked this one: <http://www.4clojure.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks interesting. Any other recourses?</comment></comment>


Google Employees Watch In Horror As 60 Percent Of Their Stock Options Drown  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/10/google-employees-watch-in-horror-as-60-percent-of-their-stock-options-drown/ <comment><USER2> _"The free food and transportation are great perks and all, but let's get real here. Without the financial upside those stock options represent, Google employees will start looking elsewhere."_

Free food and transportation might be even more valuable now.

Anyone that wants to work at a big company won't find better stock options and definitely not a better work environment. Anyone that wants to work in a startup environment was going to leave Google eventually. So no, Googler's won't be running for the door.

I'd be interested to see how the internal market for reselling stock options looks right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Forget about food and transportation... having a job will be the most valuable thing of them all.

I doubt many Googlers will 'start looking elsewhere'... where exactly would they look? Dubai? China? Heh.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. I am no longer convinced that people actually _think_ before writing TC articles.

<comment><USER4> TC has basically become part of the mainstream media then? That's a shame, I guess it's back to the Economist for me

<comment><USER5> Did you ever find TC to be on level with The Economist, or even in the same ballpark? Or hell, even the same sport?

TechCrunch does one thing very well, which is up to the moment headlines (on a rapidly changing industry) with just enough commentary that you can get a feel for what happened. It's one very small notch above a Twitter feed. If you're looking there for in-depth analysis, you're always going to be disappointed.

<comment><USER3> _If you're looking there for in-depth analysis, you're always going to be disappointed._

Quite the contrary; I want TC to report start-up news. That's it. I don't want any editorials, op-eds, or analysis. Why? Because, as many _many_ articles including this one prove, they are nearly always completely ignorant of the situation and say ridiculously stupid shit as a result.

They do that well, as you said, but it's when they go beyond the bare necessities and actual facts into the realm of "analysis" that the writers (and editors and everyone else between an article and my face) fall flat on their asses and cause my blood pressure to rise in the process.

 _"Shit, I can't swim. I know I can't. So you know what I do? I stay my black ass outta the pool."_

<comment><USER6> I don't think TC even cares if their analysis is sensible.

For them, the value is long comment-threads and inlinks/clickthroughs. And bad analysis often gets more such attention... so bad analysis is what they prefer to provide.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I live in a fantasy world where people who "report the news" do so in a manner where only facts are presented and any opinions or analyses are backed up by trustworthy, informed, unbiased sources. I realize that world doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean I won't stop berating those who create "news" for this one.

Sadly, your point is an oft-relevant one so my only recourse is to read TC even less than I do now, which is to say stop reading the articles that show up here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know when their fiscal year ends, but having a drop right before review time means that when annual grant time comes around you're getting them at a lower price. Of course if the market is only going to go down-down-down then this is precious little consolation.

Google moved into our area a couple years ago. When that happened the buzz in the tech job market was full of "I could go apply at Google". I remember, even at that point, having the feeling that the stock grants would probably be small and the potential for a stock price slide was really high.

I would say with most tech companies if your employee number is less than 50 AND you have a high ranking position (manager plus) you might have a chance of having stock with a significant upside. Otherwise you're better off just getting the cash up front, in salary. Obviously Google was quite a bit larger and more successful, but post-IPO grants in technology are generally a joke.

<comment><USER8> This is generally true, but I was under the impression that Google gave unusually generous grants as a form of compensation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On the bright side, I suppose, any new Google employees will have a bigger gain to look forward to.

</comment><comment><USER10> Options don't become worthless when they're out of the money, as long as they haven't expired yet. The probability of the option being valuable at expiry is greater than zero, so the expected present value of the option is greater than zero.

<comment><USER11> Indeed. If anyone has goog options that they think are "worthless" then I'll be happy to buy them at one cent each.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This could actually be a boon to employees at Google as this may mean they have to start raising salaries.

The same thing happened at Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and Adobe as they transitioned from growth companies to mature companies. Once they couldn't necessarily count on their rising stock price to act as part of their employee's compensation they started to raise salaries to help make up the difference.

<comment><USER13> Also, restricted stock grants (like Microsoft adopted) look a lot better. Yes, it hurts to see your "potential grant" value decrease - a 50% drop is a 50% drop - but there is still absolute value (unless the stock becomes worthless).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I watch in horror as 60 percent of my 401k drowns.

</comment><comment><USER15> One problem with options is the rift it may cause between people who joined the company while the stock was going up versus those who joined while the stock was going down. The people with the sinking options start to wonder why the guy next to them is leaving early each week to head out on his yacht, while you're stuck working extra hard to try to earn a 10% boost in your base salary next year. I believe Gates said something once about how offering options in the MS early years was one of his biggest regrets - exactly for this reason.

</comment><comment><USER16> 329 is the magic number (of worthlessness) eh?

328.8 as of right now.

</comment><comment><USER17> Current Share Price of the Company = 5 x Book value Per Share of the Company.

Current Market Capitalization of the Company = 10 x Quarterly Revenue/Sales of the Company.

Anything beyond this could be irrational or manipulation.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is happening to people in all sorts of industries.

</comment><comment><USER19> > _Google Employees Watch In Horror_

Feels like Digg.

</comment><comment><USER20> Tagged as propaganda and FUD.</comment>


CO2 Coalition Propaganda About the Benefits of Carbon Dioxide - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc-ypCFI0DE <comment><AUTHOR> More info about the CO2 coalition, which recently held a conference sponosred by Facebook, Google, and Microsoft:

[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/google- facebook...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/google-facebook-and- microsoft-sponsored-a-conference-that-promoted-climate-change-denial/)</comment>


Paul Volcker has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/business/paul-a-volcker-dead.html <comment><USER3> Volcker taught the world how central banks should reconcile their multiple, sometimes conflicting mandates to effectively manage monetary policy.

When he became chairman of the US Federal Reserve in 1980, the US was suffering from stagflation, or stagnation + inflation, which economists previously believed was impossible to have at the same time.

The fear was that solving stagnation by lowering interest rates would drive higher inflation, possibly hyperinflation, but conversely that raising interest rates to solve inflation would exacerbate the stagnation, possibly into a depression.

Volcker showed that focusing on and killing inflation by raising interest rates, even to extreme levels (briefly up to ~20%), you end both inflation and stagnation. For one reason, low, steady, predictable inflation, better enables businesses to plan, hire and invest.

And that has been central bank policy ever since (though they arguably mistakenly deviated from it under the latter part of Greenspan's tenure). As Bernanke said, "He personified the idea of doing something politically unpopular but economically necessary." It's rare to have such an impact on one's field, especially under such adverse circumstances.

<comment><USER4> The alternative story I've heard is that "stagflation" happened to coincide with a massive surge in oil prices due to OPEC — which are an input to just about every product we use, hence increasing prices — and Volcker's deflationary recession just happened to coincide with OPEC falling apart. But this alternative explanation seems so obviously different from the lesson in your post that it can't be the full story, so I assume there's some nuance.

<comment><USER5> The economist Ha Joon Chang has written extensivly how a somewhat higher target interest rate, like 5-7%, is actually better overall than the super-low targets the fed has. Lower interest rates tend to favor financial incumbents because they make money anyway because they have more and can sit on it, which implies that the money isn't actually helping develop new value in the market.

<comment><USER6> > The economist Ha Joon Chang has written extensivly how a somewhat higher > target interest rate, like 5-7%, is actually better overall than the super- > low targets the fed has.

Better for what circumstances? The Fed doesn't start with interest rate targets, they start with a dual mandate on employment and inflation control and set interest rates based on expected results based on that mandate, which can at times be high and are now low (which is mostly, currently, a sign of monetary policy compensating for an extended period of defective fiscal policy.)

<comment><USER7> Inflation is the only mandate. There's been a lot of discussion about whether employment should play into their role. When it does creep in it's around now outdated discussions about whether going beyond so called full employment causes inflation to rise. Clinton was the first to get a fed chair to admit there was no such thing as full employment and later it was Yellen who really pushed fed policy to ignore employment levels. There are some out there who say we are playing with fire by not targeting an employment number and that sometimes includes me but then I think about the woman in the street I saw about a year ago. At first I was worried she'd been robbed or attacked, she was yelling really loudly but as I got closer I realized she was yelling that she'd finally gotten a job. That would probably never had happened under a fed that targets an arbitrary 5% unemployment Figure and that is one of the many criticisms I've had for past fed actions that have ignored the little man by playing god up in their star chamber.

<comment><USER6> > Inflation is the only mandate.

No, it's not. Under the Federal Reserve Act (specifically, 12 U.S.C. § 225A) there is actually a triple mandate, as monetary policy is to aim to acheive "maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates."

Inflation control (stable prices) is the second listed.

<comment><USER7> I think it's interesting that this definition of mandate came in 77 immediately ahead of Volker's appointment and he essentially ignored it. The fed have always had a bit of heart burn over whether their job includes employment. Even today, there is not an employment target, there is only an inflation target and its precisely because no one really knows or agrees on what the employment target should be. I think when greenspan acted to raise rates, like Volker, he was predominantly concerned about inflation rather than jobs even though raising rates did cool the economy and reduce jobs. And yet, neither man or policy was punished for essentially ignoring the employment component. Now in more recent years, Yellen has been out on the forefront of pushing the limits of what full employment means but her successor seems to be more interested in getting the fed back focused onto the issue of monetary policy. Hopefully this clarifies where I'm coming from...do you substantially disagree with this assessment or is it just the fact that I confused the issue by phrasing my argument in a way that seemingly conflicts with the statute?

<comment><USER6> > I think it's interesting that this definition of mandate came in 77 > immediately ahead of Volker's appointment and he essentially ignored it

The Fed chair doesn't unilaterally set policy, and the Fed Board of Governors in Volker's term didn't ignore the other parts of the mandate, it just saw inflation as the biggest risk, for reasons which are pretty easy to understand in the historical context, even if they were wrong in hindsight.

> Even today, there is not an employment target, there is only an inflation > target and its precisely because no one really knows or agrees on what the > employment target should be

That's not entirely true, it's more that it's because they have a very firm idea of what the employment target should be, but it's not a fixed employment _level_ but the (dynamically shifting, in terms of employment measures) point at which further monetary stimulus has little further employment impact but great inflationary impact.

> I think when greenspan acted to raise rates, like Volker, he was > predominantly concerned about inflation rather than jobs

Of course; the Board of Governors raises rates when inflation is the greatest concern, it lowers them when jobs are the greatest concern. They'll admit that quite openly, you haven't made some stunning discovery. The understanding (somewhat simplified) is that there is a range (which moves dynamically based on other factors in the economy) in which easier money produces more employment with comparatively little inflationary effect, and a range (in interest rate terms, a lower level than the preceding range) in which it produces inflation with little jobs effect, as "full employment" has been reached (with the reverse effects in each range for tighter money). The Fed, again somewhat simplified, largely acts on interest rates based on which range it feels the current situation is in, aiming for the moderate inflation/"full employment" boundary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "In 2009 Paul Volcker, berating a banking industry that had taken finance to the brink of disaster, quipped that "the ATM has been the only useful innovation in banking for the past 20 years".

From: [https://www.ft.com/content/052f9310-5738-11e7-80b6-9bfa4c1f8...](https://www.ft.com/content/052f9310-5738-11e7-80b6-9bfa4c1f83d2)

</comment><comment><USER9> My view isn't full of praise. My family was really affected by the recession he caused. The recession was brutal and lots of people never worked again - <USER2> caused a lot of pain and despair.

Everyone talks about how taming inflation is so wonderful. Taming mostly benefited the wealthiest - as interest rates have tumbled asset prices have soared in value. Ever since working people's salaries have stagnated. Ironically now people are worried about deflation.

<comment><USER10> Not sure if you know this, but dropping interest rates is a policy that is strictly speaking opposed to taming inflation. It in fact _creates_ inflation. You might have your history wrong?

> Everyone talks about how taming inflation is so wonderful. Taming mostly > benefited the wealthiest - as interest rates have tumbled asset prices have > soared in value.

After Volcker's deflationary policy, the authorities got scared from a small bump, instituted a reactionary inflationary policy, and _that_ inflation has helped the wealthiest.

> Ever since working people's salaries have stagnated.

That is a designed consequence of inflation:

[https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for- hi...](https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher- inflation/)

> Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would > require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a > somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just > temporarily, but on a sustained basis.

Or, to put it differently, inflation is necessary to cheat the working class out of the value of their money, in the name of posting good employment numbers. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) on a societal scale)

<comment><USER11> > Not sure if you know this, but dropping interest rates is a policy that is > strictly speaking opposed to taming inflation. It in fact creates inflation. > You might have your history wrong?

Doesn't this depend on how much of the money supply is debt?

I agree that dropping interest below zero when 99% of the money is debt can be inflationary, but back then maybe most money was "real" (not debt) and then dropping interest would have been deflationary?

<comment><USER10> 1) as to 'real'ness, which is not really I think anything I can comment on (or IMO, any honest economist can) writ large -- in the 80s we were well past nixon shock when the US detached from the Bretton Woods II.

2) Perhaps you're referring to reserve limits holding back the money multiplier to a maximum of 10x, which would make it realer than now, when the multiplier is unbounded?... Even if money is realer, if we have any debt at all (presumed by the notion of an interest rate lever) you are lowering the price of debt, which encourages borrowing, meant to or not, which will not pump M0 but will increase the amount of money that people think they have (presuming they can be paid back as creditors), or really, the amount of money that people think they have in their bank accounts that they think their banks can recover from their leveraged adventures.

3) now probably the real fake labor subjective value of money is neither true to the austrian nor the keynesian/chicagoan extremes, certainly not the smith/marx/ricardian absolute (I mean let's say you do something crazy like save the earth from an asteroid strike, how much was that one hour of looking at a photograph _worth_ surely not the same as one hour of a worker in a nail factory), and not really a thing that depends entirely on M0 nor the velocity of money (an immesurable measurable if ever there was one) in which case who the hell knows. In the end we're all dead anyways. The three universal truths are death, taxes, and network splits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And now, a word from scrooge:

[https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/120405738566232064...](https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1204057385662320641)

<comment><USER13> A damning indictment of the man. Thank you for sharing this counter-point analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A good account of Volcker's tenure at the Fed can be found in "Secrets of the Temple" by William Greider.

</comment><comment><USER15> Paul was one of the very few people I consider to be a hero in this world.

He had an unbelievable ability to stand up to the existing power structure by convincing people he had a better plan and then executing to perfection.

I don't know if it would be possible to have another Volcker in the central banking world these days but we certainly need one.

</comment><comment><USER16> From his recent memoir:

'... erosion in what Alexander Hamilton insisted at the very beginnings of the republic would be the true test of government: "its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration."'

'We embarked on long, unnecessary, and ultimately unwinnable wars far from home. We failed to recognize the costs of open markets and rapid innovation to sizable fractions of our own citizenry. We came to think that inventive financial markets could discipline themselves.'

Free preview, here:

[https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/paul- volcker/keepi...](https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/paul- volcker/keeping-at-it/9781541788299/#module-whats-inside)

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMN17uBzCw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMN17uBzCw4)

Very insightful interview with Ray Dalio

<comment><USER9> Thanks, its great to see a dedicated public servant. Here is the link to his foundation. [https://www.volckeralliance.org/](https://www.volckeralliance.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Volcker is overrated in my view. There is a good reason why so many people on Wall Street hold him in highest regard. I believe his perceived success enabled irresponsible monetary policies over the past 30 years. This is how we ended up with a 3% bound on a ten-year and trapped into perpetuity.

</comment><comment><USER19> Negative interest rates take over the world, Volcker dies... I can't help but see a connection here.

</comment><comment><USER20> [http://archive.is/g1cf5](http://archive.is/g1cf5)

</comment><comment><USER21> Not just waging war on inflation, but being the name behind the Volcker Rule, which prohibits banks from making certain speculative investments, and arguably inhibits some of the worst excesses of "casino capitalism"

</comment><comment><USER22> Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way but... If you have to explain who someone is, is their obituary really a news story?

Everybody dies, some tragically young while others such as Mr Volcker lived long lives.

There problem is that often these obits ends up being used to further some agenda (although I don't get that sense here.

<comment><USER23> Many here don't know who he was (I didn't) but nobody outside of our circles care about Paul Graham or Linus Torvalds, either. I'm sure almost every IB associate in NYC knows who Volcker is.

Whether _I_ know them specifically or not, I think a former Fed chairman dying qualifies as news.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin up 15+ percent in 1 day - <AUTHOR> https://mtgox.com/ <comment><USER2> Not sure how you can accept Bitcoins as a payment form, unless you tie it expressly to another currency. With this much fluctuation, the only other option would be an auction.

I think this makes it likely speculation is the only driving force for the value of a bitcoin at the moment, which doesn't bode well for something that wants to be a currency.

Edit: To be clear, what I mean is that normally we sell things for say, $2 and rarely adjust the price (a few times a year is unusual, usually it isn't even that quickly). You would need to constantly adjust your selling price in Bitcoins, making it very hard to use as an actual currency when the perceived value goes up this quickly.

Gasoline is one of the few things we buy that fluctuates pretty rapidly, and when it fluctuates people that own gas stations are often squeezed, sure they have a tank of gas they bought for say $3/gallon, but they need to schedule the next tank at $3.25/gallon, so all the profit from the current tank of gas is going to the next fill up. And when the price of gas drops, if they can't sell their $3.25/gallon gas quickly enough, they take a loss. For small stations operating on thin margins, this can wreck a month of profits.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are several factors driving the bitcoin prices up, including people from European countries converting their money to bitcoin because it makes it harder to seize.

But since the beginning of the year bitcoin has doubled nearly 3 times, and this past month has seen additional acceleration. Bitcoin has been in the news a but I don't see any legitamate reason for the dramatic spikes of the past few weeks... except for speculaiton.

I posted this because I think that today's extraordinary spike is preceeding a crash of the market. At some point, all of the serious speculators will have put all their money into the coin, and they will be looking to cash out. A huge spike like this would seem like an optimal time to cash out.

And if there aren't enough people to buy the coins, the market will plummet.

Bitcoin has been succesful recently because the value has continued to go up. When the price takes a hit, people will lost confidence, and non-speculators will also start to sell. I don't know how hard the initial hit will be, but the last time that Bitcoin started losing value, it spent almost 3 months declining.

I believe that the same thing will happen again, and bitcoin will (after the initial hit) decline for several months before starting to make its deflationary recovery.

<comment><USER3> > There are several factors driving the bitcoin prices up, including people > from European countries converting their money to bitcoin because it makes > it harder to seize.

I doubt many people are stupid enough to trust Bitcoin with their savings.

The thing with Bitcoin is that identities are easily made, and transactions are hard to track. Nothing is stopping you from creating a whole load of transactions between addresses you own, essentially creating a lot of traffic and faking interest in the currency. I'm sure there are lots of Bitcoin bots out there propping up prices, run by speculators who bought low.

<comment><USER4> >I doubt many people are stupid enough to trust Bitcoin with their savings.

You should have more faith in human stupidity. It has a proven track-record.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now, whenever I buy something in Bitcoins, I always end up getting a refund after the vendor converts into local currency - which I then need to sell to get USD again.

I expect that when it comes back down at 15% a day, the opposite will occur, and I will have to add a bit more.

It's annoying - I don't really care whether 1 Bitcoin = $USD 1, $USD 10, $USD 100, $1000, or $USD 10,000 - that's completely immaterial to me - I just wish it wouldn't move around.

It is interesting how more vendors who, for whatever reason are no longer able to accept paypal or credit cards, are transitioning over to BitCoin. It's certainly going mainstream more quickly than I would have thought.

This constant volatility is nothing but bad news though.

</comment><comment><USER6> That a _whole currency_ can have fluctautions as big as this one in such a short time-span shows that it's still a very small currency, and that it doesn't take much manipulation, supply or demand to significantly impact it's value.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's worth mentioning to balance recent articles quoting how the BitCoin economy is now very big(tm).

</comment><comment><USER7> "Bitcoin is good if you want to make a deposit of between $1,000 and $10,000. But the liquidity is just not there in the system for multimillion dollar transactions," Colas points out.

[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-20/jittery- span...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-20/jittery-spaniards- seek-safe-haven-in-bitcoins)

It's not a bubble if big money decides (or rather realizes) they can and will transfer and settle differences in bitcoin rather than fiat. (to me that's bitcoin's strongest point.. it's too cumbersome for day-to-day instant purchases) It might be a bubble now, but at some point either now or in the future, the (next) bubble won't pop.

</comment><comment><USER8> Im super surprised at this and i certainly dont understand it. True, Bitcoin now has a surge of popularity because several retailers with pull are using it and it got more news. Then it spiked the price, getting more attention. But the rise is so big that i dont understand what buyers are thinking.

Holders of BTC are making a lot of money selling (if they are selling), but why are people buying at this prices? BTC is not a need-purchase.

I wonder if after spiking price, the very BTC community started investing more money in what they already have. That could explain lack of sellers and price- spiking.

<comment><USER9> > But the rise is so big that i dont understand what buyers are thinking.

"Hey, internet money / commodities on the rise, buy now, sell for profit, I'm in!" times tens or hundreds of thousands.

<comment><USER8> Way too speculative for new users. I think its the players themselves.

This might not be that known but Bitcoin has a stockmarcket with bonds and stock. For the volume of the coin, a significant part of the users of the coin are people trading and speculating with it. They are way more comfortable and likely to play with a rise like this than any other.

Someone with 1000 BTC made over 60k dollars in a couple of weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hope people are selling something at these price levels. BTC may continue to run or may crash really hard soon, but at least make sure that if the crash comes you end up ahead.

<comment><USER11> See, this logic makes no sense to me, unless you bought way more bitcoin than you could afford. Every bitcoin I sell now (without topping back up, as I would normally do for my spending bitcoins) represents a potentially massive amount of future wealth. The downside is limited to the amount I put in to begin with.

If bitcoin crashes to nearly nothing, I will be sad that such a brilliant experiment has failed. I'll also be bummed that my money is gone, but I won't be destitute and it won't make my life worse off.

<comment><USER10> " Every bitcoin I sell now (without topping back up, as I would normally do for my spending bitcoins) represents a potentially massive amount of future wealth. The downside is limited to the amount I put in to begin with."

Lets say you purchased 10 BTC at 40 bucks. Losing 400 won't break the bank. Now it crossed 120. If you sold 4 BTC you'd still have 6 BTC and make 80 bucks in the process. The $80 isn't as important as the fact that you've already effectively reduced the cost basis of the 6 BTC to zero, in which case you literally could just sit there and wait. If the price did crash to zero, you would still be net ahead.

<comment><USER12> You're making the sunk cost fallacy. The amount you paid for an asset is irrelevant to its present value, and equally irrelevant to whether and how much of it to sell.

<comment><USER13> 'Sunk cost' implies an irreversible transaction. Bitcoins are highly liquid. Nothing fallacious about this logic.

<comment><USER12> It does not imply anything about reversibility. It applies just as well to a liquid asset like bitcoin or stock as to an illiquid asset such as a house.

Two people each have 1 BTC. One paid $5 for it, the other paid $10 for it. Their present situations are identical, therefore the rational behavior is the same for both of them, despite their different purchase prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's up to $147. Was $140 just a few minutes ago. Any bets on whether it hits $200 today?

</comment><comment><USER15> I oppose Bitcoin for the same reason I oppose money not based on gold or other valuable physical resource. It lets one entity to produce money out of nowhere, at the drop of a hat.

There used to be a video in higher quality, but this will have to do. Hans Hermann Hoppe gives a concise, high-level explanation of money: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gizetn5VuA0>

<comment><USER16> There is a hard limit to the amount of Bitcoins however.

<comment><USER17> I don't get this. If there are 21 million bitcoins but they're infinitely divisible - you can send 0.0000001 BTC to someone.. Then how is there a hard limit?

Countries have done this many times by dropping zeros when their currencies devalue, etc. The whole 'there are a fixed number of bitcoins' makes no sense if you can just divide the currency unit by 1 million and call the new currency micro bit coin.

<comment><USER16> What I meant is you can't make more. If someone owns a million Bitcoins, that million Bitcoins cannot be devalued by someone mining a trillion Bitcoins. More Bitcoins cannot come into existence after the 21 million limit.

Sure, they can be slit down and down, but Gold can too. The difference is you can mine more Gold. Not possible with Bitcoin.

<comment><USER18> I guess the main difference is that we know exactly how many bitcoins are left to be mined, while we don't really know how much gold is left in the earth's crust.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Salam - <AUTHOR> https://rayanfam.com/topics/hypervisor-from-scratch-part-8/ <comment><USER2> Please use the original title of the article when posting here. Thanks!</comment>


Danielle Morill: 61 potential dead unicorns - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/DanielleMorrill/status/577660371231637504? <comment><AUTHOR> The thread on Twitter contains some interesting comments too. She is going to publish the report this week I think.</comment>


Game theory analysis, proposed solution to Homelessness - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/nomorenicksleft/comments/4g79ja/homelessness_game_theory_and_asshole_municipal/ <comment><USER2> I think the problem is homeless people are considered useless by our society and there's a high percentage of homeless people who consider society useless. You're proposal is to house them temporary but only the ones from the city that is doing the housing. We already have a well funded housing solution that will take anybody. Jail.

I think the solution has to be to lure them back into society by offering jobs. There's always work to be done in any major city, but there's no work to do unless they have a Labor Ready or other daily work program.

We should look at homelessness in a city from a positive perspective, an overflowing of human resources. Teams can be formed and clean up grafati and litter clean up. Do community rejunivatuon projects like painting landscaping and building community farms and gardens.

That's one part of the puzzle the other problem is that a lot of homeless people do work and can't afford a place to live. Personally I've had hundereds of dollars in my pockets, full time jobs and a place to live alluded me, or it was just too expensive and I felt like working and spending most of my money on an apartment, climbing the corporate latter wasn't beneficial to myself or humanity.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's the bigger picture though... Any area that figures out homelessness doesn't just have to solve it for their community, but for every community on a 10 hour bus ride.

The city I live in has good policies regarding helping homelessness. The problem, is that every city around us, including Indianapolis, ships their homeless here. It is a classic tragedy of the commons. And any solution that doesn't account for the game theory applications is doomed to fail for those very reason.</comment></comment>


Functional DOM programming - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/67d81637d43

<comment><USER2> This is very interesting that you don't use React.createClass functionality and yet get most of the advantages of React :)</comment>


Bloomberg's VIP Terminal Tweeters - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/bloombergs-vip-terminal-tweeters.html

<comment><USER2> (Bloomberg employee) It might seem like a crazy interface if you haven't used a Terminal before, but the thing which the articles/screenshots don't really convey is that it feeds into the existing news backend. We consume 80,000+ news feeds so the Twitter content feeds in just like any other news source. Lots of handles have been imported and classified different ways and the same entity / topic classification that occurs for articles will also occur on tweet content without making a Twitter specific backend or frontend app.

<comment><USER3> Do people/institutions pay to be on the list?

<comment><USER2> No, it's just a matter of the data team understanding their relevance to customers and getting to categorizing them. I think they've done enough to go live but it's an ongoing process for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That interface makes my eyes bleed, is that what is considered "cutting edge" in the stock trading industry?

<comment><USER5> It isn't a consumer product - prettiness has nothing to do with usability. This is an extreme power user environment where discoverability and aesthetics take a back seat to consistency and reliability.

Think of it less like a computer program and more like the cockpit of an airplane. It needs to be powerful, it can require training before use, it needs to be consistent, it needs to be fault-tolerant and mistake-tolerant, and it doesn't need to look good.

<comment><USER4> I get that, I would have just thought even with a product optimized for the traits you mention would be a little more advance. That said I realize I am making a snap judgement here from a single screenshot of the software which is probably not entirely fair of me. I was simply under the impression that the tools traders used were a little more advanced looking I guess.

<comment><USER3> Do not let the user interface fool you. Bloomberg is about as "advanced" a trading information system as you can get. Its main competitor, Reuters, is also no better looking and often used simultaneously. Together they sew up most of the trading information market, 60%+.

A trader will also have a third application/screen for trade input into their firms systems.

Bloomberg terminal was designed for non-computer users back in the 80s and the whole physical layout, especially the Bloomberg keyboard, is a part of the design. The emphasis is on speed of access by keyboard, consistency, information liveliness and responsiveness.

It also means, that Bloomberg can iterate to add functionality to the core of the application (which is not the UI itself), a hell of a lot faster than new competitors.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for this, I really enjoy learning about the inner working of other industries. Thank you for correcting my ignorance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think that this feature is going to be used that often, for two main reason:

(i) when a Bloomberg user uses the terminal to lookup securities and other economic/financial information, they don't want to be open about it (trading strategies, investment focus, etc, are well guarded secrets and become real competitive advantages),

(ii) most of the firms that use Bloomberg Terminals have Twitter and other "social" networks blocked by firewalls.

Correction: given that it is a read only, "curated" list of users, I do believe it will be used. I was skeptic about the ability of being able to tweet, but it's been made clear that tweeting won't be permitted.

<comment><USER7> I disagree with you and I suspect it will be used by more than a few traders as an indicator of sentiment - they'll use it a way to quickly gauge what people are thinking about particular companies and use that as another variable for their trading/sales decisions.

Your two reasons don't make a lot of sense to me, based on my experience in the industry. Specifically -

(i) If you're using a Bloomberg terminal, it's somewhat implicit that Bloomberg knows what you're using it to look at (as well as who you're emailing via it etc). If people didn't trust them not to tell everyone else what you're looking at, no one would use Bloomberg. Your strategies shouldn't be a secret from the rest of your desk or your own company (assuming you're at a bank/hedge-fund/prop-house rather than a rent-a-desk prop-shop where everyone only works on their own accounts and thus the guy next to you is your competitor). The majority of traders aren't executing their own strategies anyway, but are working within a set of parameters set by their company or clients.

(ii) a) This is becoming less true, more and more banks etc. are allowing access to view Twitter, but not to post to it. b) I think you might have missed the point of the service where Bloomberg is offering a read only Twitter feed to avoid the problem of Twitter being blocked.

<comment><USER6> Trading strategies within a floor are shared, never with other firms, that is simply to shoot yourself on the foot.

Regarding Bloomberg knowing what you search for and look at, the confidentiality clauses are pretty strict in the service agreement.

<comment><USER7> Yes, that was the point I was making - your original post was implying that people won't use a Bloomberg feature because "other people might work out how they're trading".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like MG's comment on being included (@parislemon)

"Hope they like Giants baseball and then Michigan basketball tweets tomorrow…"

</comment><comment><USER9> Hedge accordingly. :)</comment>


Programming Languages Class - Build a Web Browser (Free Class) - <AUTHOR> http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs262

<comment><USER2> Isn't building a browser a bit wired for a class thats called "Programming languages"? I'm main sure when you write a browser you have to write a parser and at least an interpreter but these are not things I would put into a PL Class.

But it seams to be a Udacity policy to have a "What could i do with this if I new alot about it". Instead of "AI for Robotics" the call it "Programming a selfdriving car", instead of "Fundamentals of CS" they call it "Building a search engine".

<comment><USER3> you should check the syllabus ....looks pretty complete to me :

"""Description: This class will give you an introduction to fundamentals of programming languages. In seven weeks, you will build your own simple web browser complete with the ability to parse and understand HTML and JavaScript. You will learn key concepts such as how to specify and process valid strings, sentences and program structures. Then, you will design and build an interpreter - a program that simulates other programs.""

<comment><USER4> Yes, but the steps from "understand HTML and JavaScript" to display that somehow formatted & execute the JS are big & somewhat important for a web browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've worked with Wes (the PL class instructor), and he gives _excellent_ lectures. It's great to see Udacity recruiting such high-quality professors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats great to hear

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I didnt find exact info about that but are they using Python for programming the browser?

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm, not sure. The CS 101 class (Build a Search Engine) does use Python.

The class description only say the following: "Learn about programming languages while building a web browser! You will understand JavaScript and HTML from the inside-out in this exciting class."</comment></comment>