Human intelligence and the environment (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20100930.htm <comment><USER2> "This all happened under the impact of a kind of fanatic religious ideology called economics -- and that's not a joke -- based on hypotheses that have no theoretical grounds and no empirical support but are very attractive because you can prove theorems if you adopt them: the efficient market hypothesis, rational expectations hypothesis, and so on. The spread of these ideologies, which is very attractive to concentrated wealth and privilege, hence their success, was epitomized in Alan Greenspan, who at least had the decency to say it was all wrong when it collapsed. I don't think there has ever been a collapse of an intellectual edifice comparable to this, maybe, in history, at least I can't remember one."

This is something we need to talk about. It's true. The german "Ordaliberalism" is at work in the greek debt crisis at this moment. I'm sure there is some superficial mathematics at work to prove the ideology. But where is the criticism?

So Ask HN: Where is the macroeconomics rooted in scientific principles and empiricism? I'm sure it's there but policy makers don't look like they see it. Everyone is talking about big-data... where are the papers that prove or disprove economic theories? We have the data. Let's be scientific and kick out ideology like all did with the "Deutsche Physik[1]" \- it's time for it.

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

<comment><USER3> If we could plot the life of a dollar or credit we could create a science of money. Could something like the blockchain offer the opportunity to build a solid theory of money by mapping transactions? I imagine the blockchain, as it is now, is a bit of a mutant given transactions are limited to select goods and services, however if it was widely adopted as a transactional ledger by banks we could better understand how money flows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting to think that very probably during the lives of many of the people on HN, we're going to see some pretty massive geo-engineering projects on a global scale. Probably 2040-2050 or thereabouts, once the basic fact of climate change is utterly undeniable to even the loudest idiots.

A decade or so after that we should have our verdict whether intelligence is truly a lethal mutation, or not. Of course it's still only a sample size of one - Mayr's argument has little to do with the Drake equation.

</comment><comment><USER5> The following comment is quite thought provoking and stayed with me for quite a while:

      intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation

Video snippet: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzBqPiSpgVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzBqPiSpgVA)

<comment><USER6> Marine biologist explores this in the sci-fi Blindsight, suggesting that self- awareness is an evolutionary hiccup that in the long-run wastes resources that could be spent towards building a better species. See: ants, for example.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Xcode REPL for remote coding interviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.bananaide.com/ <comment><USER2> very nice. would be cool if it used something like InjectionIII.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh thanks for suggestion! It seems that InjectionIII is almost like nodemon. A bit concerned about its limitation ([https://github.com/johnno1962/InjectionIII#limitations](https://github.com/johnno1962/InjectionIII#limitations)) but happy to give it a try</comment></comment>


Silicon Valley elites are spending $60 for 3 gallons of unfiltered water - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-raw-water-obsession-2018-1 <comment><USER2> Whatever you might think of this, I think it bears mentioning that everything else we eat plays a huge role in determining our internal bacterial landscape. In other words, fill your diet with sugar and alcohol and all the live water in the world isn't going to help.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shades of P. T. Barnum, I think.</comment>


Show HN: Create your own Digital Currency with this self-hosted Web App - <AUTHOR> http://tonken.mooo.com <comment><USER2> What does it do? How does it work? It's asking me to sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey ! :) Tonken is a web application that allows you to create your own Digital-Currency. It's Plug and Play, build with Node.js and MongoDB: Download it, configure it, and deploy it. That's it! :)

You can choose a different color theme, and it comes with an Admin panel where you can Edit users. It's also super easy to customize, thanks to EJS.

The Github link: [https://github.com/Icesofty/Digital- Currency](https://github.com/Icesofty/Digital-Currency)</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Has anyone raised VC/Angel funding recently? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone raised VC/Angel funding recently (i.e., in the last two months)? Specifically has anyone raised Seed/series A funding? If so, what has your experience been? Is it significantly more difficult now or is it still somewhat doable? Do you know of any VCs/Angels that are still investing in Seed/Series A rounds? <comment><USER2> I've actually been wondering the same thing. With our current economic situation (being in a recession), are investosr mostly closed-minded and looking for ideas that (a) save money, or (b) provide boost to bottom line?

Would also be curious to know what startups have done early rounds of funding recently, and what their revenue model looks like (if applicable).

<comment><USER3> I'm not a startup-er, but I do know some VC's and firms. Their take on things right now tends to be cloud-focused. With things like AWS and other cloud- styles out there, building a large data center, or renting out standard servers per month is becoming less and less attractive. They certainly still like Cloud startups, but even if you aren't a "Cloud company" (whatever that means), you should still be hosting your stuff in a cloud. Cheaper server overhead and easier dynamic scaling mean less risk for these guys.

It's not so much about belt tightening as it is about having solid fundamentals. You show up with a hosted app that earns money on day one, and you'll find someone to dance with.

If your app is up and running when you go to the VC out of the blue, that makes it easier, too.

But you all knew that already. Crispygamer closed a round of around $8 million a few weeks back. Deals are happening. They might take a little more time, and be a little smaller now, but if you have good fundamentals, VC's see this as a great time of opportunity, too. They're just going to bet a little more sanely on fewer things.

But make no mistake, they are still out there, still evaluating, and still looking for opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, angels and VC's are still investing. I have some friends who have recently received an angel seed round. Surprisingly with only a demo. No product yet.

I've also heard about some VC's doing seed rounds, but in companies which already have revenue.</comment>


MacBook Pro Keyboard Failures [Teardown and Explanations] - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/bjtyaw/macbook_pro_keyboard_failures_why_apples_dust/ <comment><USER2> It's a great teardown and commentary. I found this presentation easier to follow, as it has inline images.

[https://imgur.com/gallery/G1EcegS](https://imgur.com/gallery/G1EcegS)

I've always been a "Save $$ by buying used Macs" guy, but I'd be very hesitant to purchase a used MacBook with this terrible keyboard . . .

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for linking the imgur album -- I didn't realize there was a version with inline text! Still, I prefer the linked images, since I have a very hard time reading text in between moving gifs (needless to say, I would not be a subscriber to the Daily Prophet). Glad to have both here so visitors can read either version they prefer.

I've also been very much a fan of Macs because they tend to be very well-built and last a long time for the money. Both of my last macbooks (a 2009 and then a 2015) have served me very well for much longer than your average laptop tends to last if you use it every day and take it with you everywhere. Unfortunately this keyboard in the current version is a dealbreaker: the frustration, cost, and potential of having to lose my laptop for a week+ or just lug an external keyboard around is not worth the money. Add in the useless touchbar and my personal preference to not limit myself to usb-c/avoid low travel keyboards and you've got a perfect excuse to avoid upgrading.

<comment><USER2> ++ on the touchbar being worthless. I use a touchbar MBP for work. It's managed to complicate the most frequently used functions (brightness + sound adjustments), and I experience bugs / temporary freezing of both of those sliders until I cmd + tab switch apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I absolutely love the writing style here. Very professional, and then this lovely tidbit " _I found some household dust and threw it on the mesh._ ". I cannot help imagining the author walking to the parts bin, ruffling around for a while, and then picking up a small box with a "aha, there's my box of standard my household dust!" comment

<comment><USER4> I'd not be surprised if there was such a thing as "standard household dust". There's standard peanut butter after all: [https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/srm-2387-peanut- butter](https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/srm-2387-peanut-butter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is nobody concerned about the absurdly low key travel distance? Dust, I'm sure they will find a way to mitigate. Please don't normalize the horrible keyboards, even ignoring dust issues. You'll be typing on touchpads before you know it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hard to say if I actually mind the low travel distance. I find these keyboard very hard to type on because of the increased key size/small gaps between keys, so I constantly make typos and can't seem to orient my hands correctly without looking at the keyboard. Because of this, it's hard to look at the key travel issue in a vacuum.

Also, please read the article. This entire teardown is focused on refuting the "dust intrusion" hypothesis -- the writer actually seems to think that issues are rooted in malfunctioning metal domes under the keys linked to either wear, heat, humidity, or a combination or each. Basically there's no need to mitigate dust because it can't get into the dome mechanism even in the 2015-2017 keyboards before they installed extra dust guards, and part of the reason the 2018 still has issues is because, surprise surprise, the issue isn't just dust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Absolutely incredible effort by the guy who did the teardown.

And the extent that Apple went to just to protect tiny delicate mechanisms from dust is astonishing.

<comment><USER7> I wonder if the dust impermeability of the mechanism is not a part of the problem. While it would prevent most of the dust to get in, it could also prevent the dust from getting out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool teardown, but I'd be interested to see a disassembly of a known-bad key to compare and see what looks different.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is my personal opinion, after seeing this teardown. If you look at some of the images it looks like the actual contact areas on the PCB that the metal domes contact on are rather small, and both the dome and the contacts look like they're made out of a hard material.

0) The top side sealing on these keyboards (at least some of them; one of mine had a hole somewhere) isn't that good. One method I used to fix these keys is to dab some rubbing alcohol or ethanol into the dome thing with a qtip, and somehow it finds its way under the dome. The purpose of the black tape mentioned in the article is likely to direct the light from the backlight of the keyboard, it's easy to damage with this method of cleaning it and it causes the backlight to look bad. Solution: electrical tape carefully cut to size.

1) I feel like the debouncing (filtering the tendency for hard-on-hard contacts to make intermittent contact) is inherently difficult with a design like this. There's a lot of things to go wrong here, and even on a brand new keyboard I noticed that before the system boots (on EFI password, or FileVault2 Unlock Prompt) the keyboard is MUCH more sensitive to key repeats - Probably because half of the debouncing is done in the driver.

Perhaps if they could find out how to add a thin enough slice of carbon-filled rubber (like the black pads under the rubber remote control buttons in a telly remote) under the domes, combined with larger contact pads, the softness would allow the contact to conform to the mating surfaces and make more reliable contact. Furthermore it will absorb some shock and reduce the tendency for the switch to 'bounce'.

Furthermore, carbon filled rubber doesn't tend to corrode.

2) Perhaps they could move to capacitive sensing and do away with actually making contact. This way, there would be less issues with contact bouncing, and no current actually has to flow.Then all the electrics would be completely sealed off. This has the drawback of needing a complicated keyboard controller. Last I remember the keyboard still had logic gates hardwired to do things like SMC reset so this would be harder.

2b) Or just take the key matrix sheets from the 2012-2015 MacBook Pros, which were pressure activated by way of rubber protrusions under the rubber domes, and put the new butterfly keys on top and use a tiny metal disk a la iPhone 4s power button to press on the actual key matrix

Another oddity I noticed on a machine I recently had the keyboard changed at the Apple Store on is that the right Shift key (which just got stuck again), is very close to the left side of the aluminum, more so than the right, and isn't centered. It happens that the key is most stuck on the left, so perhaps the accidental interference fit is causing it to stick.

<comment><AUTHOR> And after considering all of these potential fixes and mitigations for keyboard problems, any sane individual is forced to wonder: why on earth would anyone want to create an entirely new keyboard mechanism when so much can apparently go wrong? Really gives you respect for the folks who designed some of the original scissor switches when you realize that one of the biggest, most hardware-talented tech companies out there can't design anything better (or, perhaps to put it less subjectively... more reliable).

Surprisingly akin to the experienced software developer's reflex of trying to avoid total rewrites at all costs: even if something has issues, like scissor switches breaking when you try to remove keys or falling off under heavy usage, it's often easier to try to fix warts on something battle-tested than to improve core functionality of a brand-new form-over-function design.</comment></comment>


Business Model of Facebook, Google, Uber Illegal in EU [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://secure.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/EDPS/PressNews/Press/2016/EDPS-2016-11-PrivacyShield_EN.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Giovanni Buttarelli, European Data Protection Supervisor, said: "...the Privacy Shield as it stands is not robust enough to withstand future legal scrutiny before the Court. Significant improvements are needed should the European Commission wish to adopt an adequacy decision, to respect the essence of key data protection principles with particular regard to necessity, proportionality and redress mechanisms. Moreover, it's time to develop a longer term solution in the transatlantic dialogue."

</comment><comment><USER2> If by business model you mean the right to assure privacy of individuals, then Facebook, Google and Uber are indeed not respecting the basic right to privacy (a human right btw).</comment>


Give HN: *.til.io resolves to 127.0.0.1 - <AUTHOR> http://til.io <comment><USER2> Relying on a magical domain "just for development" is extremely careless behavior. Even assuming that these addresses always resolved to 127.0.0.1 with no interruption, slowdown, or redirection ever, do you really want to be leaking private hostnames etc. over the internet? Simply run a local DNS with forwarding, create a zone or two for your internal machines, all done. And you can even have other record types besides A and PTR...

<comment><USER3> This kind of reminds me of "A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"

<comment><USER4> Oh lord, you made me read those fake histories again. They consistently tickle my funny-bone in an unusually strong way and I'm not entirely sure why exactly. Can anyone recommend more of this kind of stuff?

<comment><USER5> For anyone not getting the reference, here's the link: [http://james- iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...](http://james- iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> See also: [http://xip.io/](http://xip.io/)

> xip.io is a magic domain name that provides wildcard DNS for any IP address

So you can test stuff on your phone/tablet without messing with 'hosts' file, for instance: myapp.192.168.0.1.xip.io will resolve to 192.168.0.1.

<comment><USER7> That seems like more of a mess than just "messing with the hosts file." What happens when your ip changes and none of your links work correctly?

<comment><USER8> It is generally more difficult to edit a hosts file on a phone or tablet or on your non-technical coworker's computer. xip.io is useful for these situations.

And if your IP address changes, surely it is more of a pain to edit the hosts file again on these several other phones/tablets/computers than to just send a new link.

<comment><USER7> >And if your IP address changes, surely it is more of a pain to edit the hosts file again

You wouldn't need to edit the hosts file, since your made up domain would just point to 127.0.0.1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'll recommend using dnsmasq plus some local resolver configuration to set up your own host-local magic domain, eliminating the need for reliance on a third-party magic domain.

Pow[1] by the Basecamp folks provides a nicely packaged version of dnsmasq tooling for Rack & Rails apps. See also, the guard-pow and powder gems which make using Pow even nicer.

For other cases (and the DIYers among us) Thomas Sutton wrote up instructions for setting up dnsmasq[2] on OS X for app development. IIRC, the dnsmasq setup should be identical on other *nix flavors. Your local resolver configuration may vary, but this guide will get you pointed the right direction. I highly recommend reading [2] even just as a guide to understand/demystify what Pow does under the hood.

The dnsmasq setup can also be used for tools like Dokku[3], a Heroku-style service you can run in (e.g.) a local VM.

[1] [http://pow.cx/](http://pow.cx/)

[2] [http://passingcuriosity.com/2013/dnsmasq-dev- osx/](http://passingcuriosity.com/2013/dnsmasq-dev-osx/)

[3] [https://github.com/progrium/dokku](https://github.com/progrium/dokku)

<comment><USER10> I love Pow, but I _really, really_ wish they'd change their default tld from .dev to .local.

The .dev TLD might end up existing soon[1], whereas .local is reserved and will never exist on root nameservers[2]. So eventually, developers using Pow might have conflicts between their local-only dev sites and real websites. Bad mojo.

1 [http://icannwiki.com/.dev](http://icannwiki.com/.dev)

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

<comment><USER9> That won't work if you're using mDNS on the local network, as the dnsmasq resolution will hijack all queries to _.local.

Really, there just needs to be a small set of reserved TLDs. This includes one for which queries should _never* be issued off a given host. .local (== 127.0.0.1) would have been ideal, but zeroconf slurped it up first. I'd put my vote in for .dev, but the Wikipedia link indicates that Google's looking to score it. :-P

<comment><USER10> I guess .localhost (already reserved for exactly that purpose) would work then. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you use Vagrant for development, there are some plugins that will modify your HOSTS file automatically when you start your Vagrant VM. See for instance [https://github.com/cogitatio/vagrant- hostsupdater](https://github.com/cogitatio/vagrant-hostsupdater)

</comment><comment><USER12> It resolves at least to that for now. Until someone forgets to pay the bill (for various reasons), runs out of money in their bank account to keep it up or whatever reason there might be.

Then devs around the globe scramble to find out what data might have been leaked and to whom.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's around $50 a year for the domain, which is a cost I'm happy to eat as I'm using it myself.

But yes, if you're working on top secret projects or something that might leak sensitive data it's probably not a good idea to use this or any of these other services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So does localhost

</comment><comment><USER14> Or, if you have your own domain, set up a wildcard in your DNS, which could be external (I use cloudflare - free and reliable).

Example:

I own rikk.us and want to be able to set up many websites on a few machines with my network, so:

I point ✱.l.rikk.us to my laptop and now I can set up as many websites as I like on my laptop, so long as they have a binding matching ✱.l.rikk.us, and have them all work just as if they were on separate hosts.

This allows me to make testsite1.l.rikk.us, testsite2.l.rikk.us, oh.bugger.i.broke.it.l.rikkus.us, etc.

✱ Sorry for the heavy asterisks but I don't know how to write a normal one without it triggering <em>

</comment><comment><USER15> This looks like another .lvh.me Although it's nice to have a backup.

I've found this invaluable when testing subdomains. Each of our accounts gets their own subdomain and testing that is a huge pain with a hosts file (need to explicitly map each one).

The wildcard nature of .til.io or .lvh.me is key.

The only issue I've noticed with 192.168.1.101.xip.io is that if your server code splits domains on dots and expects things to be in the "nth" place then things can go wrong (cough cough Rails).

The other thing this is super useful for is testing subdomains locally from a mobile device.

</comment><comment><USER16> OT, but someone should start the .JS TLD for the tons of useful javascript libs out there. How awesome would it be to just go to Angular.js or node.js and have that be their actual site?

<comment><USER17> I agree, but it would need someone to put up the $180,000 non refundable fee for it to be considered or whatever it is. Google could afford that, but then imagine the storm they'd get from the JS community..

<comment><USER18> Worse than that: Someone would need to found a country called JavaScriptLand. 2-letter domains are reserved for ccTLDs.

<comment><USER17> Good call! I could imagine a country being easier to form than getting the community to agree who would own a GTLD anyway.. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We have something very similar at our workplace. *.l.tsl.io resolves to localhost. We usually use it to test hostnames[1] on our django projects on the the local developeent server. Definitely beats having to add a lot of records to /etc/hosts.

[1]: [http://django-hosts.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://django- hosts.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I usually just use the real sitename with a .vm tld if I'm working in local dev space.

If it turns out that someone starts up a .vm tld for real, well, no loss. I'll just switch to something else.

There's no right and no wrong way to do this on your local machine as long as you don't break the internet for everyone else and as long as it's repeatable/undoable.

<comment><USER21> How do you do that .vm thing?

<comment><USER20> In my hosts file, sites that are on my local vm are referred to as project1.vm, project2.vm and so on.

Each virtual host is configured with the name project1.vm and so on and so forth.

If I really felt like it, I could put a site on my called yahoo.com and change my hosts file to point that instead. I don't use yahoo for anything (nothing against them, I just don't) so it wouldn't hurt anything.

Additionally, my vms all have two network addresses - one is dynamic from my router (for updates, etc.) and one is a host-only connector with a fixed IP. That's the address I use to connect to the sites.

I don't bother with running a private DNS or anything - I'm more concerned with site development, not routing issues. The VM is an ends to a means and all that other stuff, while useful to know, takes up time I don't really feel like spending.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can someone explain what the puprose is?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you develop multiple websites on your local machine, you distinguish them by using different domain names for each of them. You might have site1.dev and site2.dev.

There are a variety of methods to handle this, but commonly you add a record to your system's host file to resolve these domain names to the ip address 127.0.0.1 (your local computer).

Using site1.til.io and site2.til.io instead eliminates having to manage that host file (which is a minor and repetitive annoyance).

<comment><USER23> .dev? heathen! .local please :)

<comment><USER24> Careful; if you or your coworkers use OS X, you may run into conflicts with Bonjour-registered hostnames.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have used this for a while and it works fine. I understand that it is not for every project, but you can set up quickly an app.

[https://ngrok.com/](https://ngrok.com/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I got tired of editing my host file for local development. Have been meaning to do this for a while, but I never had a domain name short enough so as not to be annoying to type.

<comment><USER26> This is brilliant. Just wait till lots of people are using this, load up a ton of patched software for every known protocol to record usernames and passwords on a machine. Then you can just intermittently have the domain resolve to that machine and collect the usernames and passwords. It'll be difficult to detect because it won't even be reproducible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not following how this might present a security issue, but I'm curious for you to expand on this. Seems like even if the DNS record managed to change in the midst of a POST request, the post would pretty obviously fail to perform as expected.

But yes, an obvious disclaimer of "don't trust me by POSTing your bank passwords to any of these subdomains" might be in order.

<comment><USER27> You can trivially farm data that people are sending to their local apps by having DNS occasionally change to an IP you own (and then immediately back, to avoid detection). On that IP, you would have something that remembers the parts of the request that might be interesting (query parameters, body) and return a benign-looking error (just severing the connection without a response would probably do it). At the very least, you'd probably get some email/pass pairs that work on a few major sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [http://readme.localtest.me/](http://readme.localtest.me/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Also, [http://whatever.new/](http://whatever.new/)

</comment><comment><USER30> How does this work? Isn't 127.0.0.1 a loopback? How does it get to the internet?

<comment><USER31> The point is it doesn't go to the internet, it just sets up an alias to your local machine.

This is useful when you want to have several different virtual hosts on your machine, all of which would otherwise be called "localhost".

<comment><USER32> It does go to the Internet, for the DNS query. This won't work offline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is pretty cool. Thanks, will be using.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, www.til.io doesn't, for a start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Touche.

I freed that one up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Ingenious idea, but no AAAA RR for ::1?

In 2014?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call, added. Might take a few to propogate.

<comment><USER34> Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> like lvh.me. also check xip.io</comment>


Facebook Chat supports syntax highlighting - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5xq3jj/facebook_chat_supports_syntax_highlighting/ <comment><AUTHOR> Note: This does not work on mobile or messenger.com

Does anyone here know of any documentation of this or other hidden gems in FB chat?</comment>


Google releases Web.dev, a tool to quickly measure website performance - <AUTHOR> https://web.dev/?ref=hackernews <comment><USER2> 200+ comments when it was launched two weeks ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434705)</comment>


Pictures of kittens for use as placeholders in your designs or code - <AUTHOR> http://placekitten.com/ <comment><USER2> Mark here, I threw placekitten.com together this weekend after a journey on a train in which I could not access placehold.it and few weeks of jokes about the concept with colleagues.

I was not planning on posting to HN, as I thought that a kitten-meme related site might not be the most appropriate (looks like the wisdom of the crowd has decided otherwise).

I can't claim that the server will stand up, so I would refrain from using the site for anything critical (not sure why you would need/want to), or that caching is entirely correct (I'm sending far-future expires, but I'm sure that I could improve given some time).

Glad that the internet likes kittens though. Confirmed a suspicion I had.

<comment><USER3> Wondering where you got all the pictures from? Is this a gray area of copyright? I'm asking because I've tried to source large amount of pictures in the past will little luck.

<comment><USER4> <http://placekitten.com/attribution.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> AAAAAHHHHHHH there's pictures of kittens at the top of HackerNews!

<comment><USER6> If ever there was proof needed to show just how far HN has fallen...

Perhaps time for me to move on.

<comment><USER7> I know it's easy to be negative about kittens because of the whole lol cats thing, but a service which provides free, sizable, placeholder images that are more than just gray boxes is actually pretty useful. Remember the days when people used to use "blah blah blah" for all of their text before the copy was in? Now we use Lorem Ipsum. These kittens may well be what we do for photographs in the future.

<comment><USER8> I agree. This (or a similar tool) is set to become a genuinely useful part of my web development toolkit.

If it used random CC images from flickr, rather than kittens, I wonder if there would be so much objection.

If you let the /b/tards' love of kittens forever bond the "kitten" symbol in your brain indelibly to the "idiocy" symbol, you are letting the /b/tards win. They are just mammals. (Kittens, not /b/tards.)

However, it probably doesn't warrant the #1 spot.

<comment><USER9> I was about to post the exact same thing. It would be cool if there was a service that pulled CC licensed photos from Flickr for this purpose and scaled them according to the user's wishes, pulling from an archive of photos based on aspect ratio, size, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You could use this one for code:

    	 /\_/|
    	 =0-0=
    	 \'I'|
    	 |<|,,\_
    	 |[>,,/,\
    	 |[|,\_,,)
    	 ((J(=__/

<comment><USER11>
    	 /*_/|
    	 =0-0=
    	 \'I'|
    	 |<|,,\_
    	 |[>,,/,\
    	 |[|,\_,,)
    	 ((J(=_*/

This one is valid C/C++/ObjC, Java, PHP, CSS...

<comment><USER12> Brilliant!! This was actually what I was expecting.

But it makes me think - are there any code editors that you can literally just drag pictures in, or put in urls and it replaces them with pictures? I could be stuck in some IDE ghetto and not even know about these things.

<comment><USER11> You can probably do that with Emacs ;-)

<comment><USER13> the code to do it starts with (

<comment><USER11> It shouldbe a minor mode that renders images instead of image-like URLs. Not that impossible to do. It's a bit beyond my magical powers, but I am sure it also ends with a ")"

<comment><USER14> auctex does the rendering-inside-text part, but I don't know of one that does it for html img tags

can't be hard

<comment><USER15> There's aview (ASCII-art image viewer which uses libaa); aview can render Ascii pictures to stdout.

<comment><USER14> aview solves a different problem

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It feels so strange to upvote a link to kitten images on HN _and actually have it be on topic_.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'll get downvoted to oblivion for this, not that I care. But what the hell is this doing at the top of HN.

<comment><USER18> Honestly, it seems really relevant to me. The idea is great, a lot of people will end up using it and it has a cute/wow factor.

It also servers as a reminder that the Internet loves kittens and other ridiculous things. It is important to not forget this general principle and to keep it in mind when designing your product.

People are ridiculous; remember to use that to your advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The less distracting version: <http://placehold.it/>

<comment><USER20> Or <http://dummyimage.com/>

<comment><USER21> placehold.it and dummyimage.com are one in the same. Source code is available at dummyimage.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Now someone needs to write a proxy that replaces all images on a site with placekittens, à la Upside-Down-Ternet (<http://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside- down-ternet.html>) and Kittenify (<http://www.reload.me.uk/kittenify>).

<comment><USER23> I just learned of Placekitten and had to drop everything and write bookmarklets: <http://hans.gerwitz.com/projects/placekitten.html>

I didn't know about Kittenify, but they have better code. Though Placekitten has nicely curated images. A marriage is inevitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice, tiny suggestion for improvement. Allow links to end in .jpg.

There are some cases where that's a nice to have. Otherwise, hilariously useful.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd like to have bindings for various languages, to be able to use it like

        placeholder=new Kitten('random');

<comment><USER26> Here's javascript, the other languages are left as an exercise.

        function Kitten(width, height, color) {
            var img, g, w, h;

            w = parseInt(width,  10);
            h = parseInt(height, 10);
            g = color ? "" : "g/";
            img = document.createElement('img');
            img.src = "http://placekitten.com/" + g + w + "/" + h;
            img.width = w;
            img.height = h;

            return img;
        };

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know theres a similar service with placeholder images but everyone loves kittens right?

<comment><USER27> Congratulations on your entry to the HN1K club ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wasn't it a goal of Hacker News to NOT have kittens at the top of the page?

</comment><comment><USER29> Along the same lines: for all of the Rails developers out there, I wrote a gem called "Sex It Up" that downloads and caches public domain images of famous artwork and sculptures.

Definitely improves the look of any prototype.

<https://github.com/aantix/sex_it_up>

<comment><USER30> One thing: You should change the name. I was expecting a totally different kind of pictures and was kind of afraid to even click the link.

<comment><USER29> Never thought of the NSFW implications.. Thanks for the headsup on this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had been using pictures of cucumbers culled from flickr up until this point. Good call.

</comment><comment><USER31> It appears that using the /g/… URL variation gives one black-and-white pictures, and leaving it out gives one color pictures, but it would be nice if you would just say that on the home page, rather than leaving us to experiment and figure it out for ourselves. Leaving out the explanation might be excusable if two sample links on the homepage just led to color and black-and- white versions of the same kitten picture, but that isn't the case.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is actually something that I would use. I always need dummy images to use as placeholders for layouts. Sometimes I'll use some of my digital images, but then I'm dealing with 300 DPI 15 megapixel images that need to resized in Photoshop, which is kind of a hassle. And as a cat lover, and fan of good photography (am a sucker for nice B&W images) this is a win-win option. Bookmarked.

<comment><USER21> <http://dummyimage.com> is your friend :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Cool idea!

My co-founder and I used to use pictures of Olivia Wilde as placeholders. It started with just one and then became a sort of tradition.

Kittens are cool too, though.

</comment><comment><USER34> Recently I've been thinking of a career change. But this, surprisingly, is the first time I've smiled about web development in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER35> While I wait for the site to load, I figured I'd comment with my own placeholder-cat experience. A site I worked on was taking a while to get me the actual images, so I took to Pixelmator and fixed myself some LOLcat placeholders. People loved it, except for one of the QAs, who said it was going to give her nightmares.

</comment><comment><USER36> A long time ago, I used to use intentionally-obscene or otherwise offensive text and images for placeholders, lorem ipsum text, variable names, etc., on the theory that this would prevent that content from ever shipping.

It only took one violation for this theory to be discarded. Luckily, the recipient was fairly cool :)

</comment><comment><USER37> And according to the weather report, it's snowing in hell right now. Looks like the week's off to a good start!

</comment><comment><USER38> Is this incredibly slow for anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER39> i think a better name would have been loremkitten.com

</comment><comment><USER40> Great! Maybe server-side cache the images so they only need to be generated once?

</comment><comment> mkr-hn More kittens to waste time at work with: <http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/cat/>

And I guess you could see if they'd let you use some of their pictures. :)

</comment><comment><USER41> Could each dimension (at least popular ones) contain multiple images? Like serving placekitten.com/200/100 is one of three or four random images?

<comment><USER42> That would avoid caching, an option would be an optional suffix like placekitten.com/200/100/2

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> A couple months ago I ended up spending good money on iStockPhoto looking for the right kitten picture to put in my app's 404 page.

If only I had waited.

</comment><comment><USER44> For a second it felt like Digg in here, people talking about content degradation. The idea was fine, just a placeholder nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is some sort of bizarro Erlang Day, right??

</comment><comment><USER46> That's awesome as our dev team here has a folder full of FPO kitties as we call them. Nice to see Front End folks think alike!

</comment><comment><USER47> The Kitten-Color-Clock: <https://gist.github.com/849093>

</comment><comment><USER48> Am I the only one who checked if "placepuppy" was already registered after seeing this?

</comment><comment><USER49> Yea! Kitties! I like it.

cf: <http://xkcd.com/231/>

</comment><comment><USER50> I plan to combine this with the jQuery konami code plugin for lots of fun.

</comment><comment><USER51> I work on a headless embedded system - what should I do?

</comment><comment><USER52> I see no kittens....

Using Chrome and thoroughly disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER53> Meh, 404s need to be fixed though ;)

<comment><USER53> <http://placekitten.com/{string}/{string}>

I know thats not the point but a funny error would be nice... :D

<comment><USER54> 404 is the right code for such things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I applaud your effort. ;)

</comment><comment><USER56> GENIUS

</comment><comment><USER57> Somebody should make one for pictures of corporate stock art. You know, the glass skyscraper shot, the white-guy-wearing-glasses-standing-over-laptop, the empty board room with leather chairs, etc...

</comment><comment><USER58> Its awesome but there is only one feature I request: Add an ability to send arbitrary parameters at the end which will be used in the uniqueness calculation to generate a unique photo. This way I can have 10 identical kitten photo sizes next to each other each with a different picture for 10x the cuteness.

</comment><comment><USER59> KITTEH!

</comment><comment><USER60> Another stroke of awesome!

</comment><comment><USER61> And in a few months they will all be replaced with goatse...

</comment><comment><USER62> I've been WAITING FOREVER for someone to make this! =D

<comment><USER62> Errr,why has anyone downvoted this? =s

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one who absolutely detests cats?

They're evil irritating virmin IMHO.

<comment><USER63> I felt the same way until I married a cat lover. They grew on me after a couple years.

<comment><USER64> They have that effect on you: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Free Kitten Wallpapers: <http://placekitten.com/1920/1080> or <http://placekitten.com/1280/1024> <http://placekitten.com/1024/768> etc.</comment>


Another appeal from Jimmy Wales - <AUTHOR> http://www.danwei.org/front_page_of_the_day/is_there_no_escape.php

<comment><USER2> Considering the sheer breadth of knowledge Wikipedia makes available to the public for free, I think we can all afford the millisecond it takes us to scroll away from the banner ad. Better yet, I think we can all throw in some money towards the project.

As for him being an ambassador to a watch company, its a pretty common concept as most Swiss luxury watch makers support everyone from athletes to humanitarians. Even if he makes money off of it, it isn't his obligation to donate it all to Wikimedia. In fact I think its a pretty smart concept to showcase Wikipedia to the type of clientele who might actually buy such watches.

</comment><comment><USER3> Although mildly annoying, the appearances of these banner ads make me more interested in whether or not Wikipedia is A/B testing these, whether they're using some kind of intelligent segmentation, whether they even HAVE someone knowledgeable of that on staff, and what the results thereof are.

<comment><USER4> [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testi...](http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I expect FSF to follow suit with rms making a personal appeal:

<http://stallman.org/photos/rms-full-size.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER6> Apparently he's an official sponsor (and they took that ridiculous photo for him):

[http://www.mauricelacroix.com/en/Brand/Ambassadors/Jimmy_Wal...](http://www.mauricelacroix.com/en/Brand/Ambassadors/Jimmy_Wales.html)

How much is he getting paid and is he donating it to Wikimedia?

</comment><comment><USER7> The one thing i dont understand about wikipedia is didnt they ever hear of videos and photos and things like that. Everytime i go to the site i feel like i entered a portal to 1990. Its ugly beyond belief and actually difficult to find proper information because of that.

</comment><comment><USER8> Enough already. Jimmy Wales, former(?) serious Objectivist and Ayn Rand fan. Now he's begging for charity regularly. Pathetic change.

<comment><USER9> Really? Wikipedia is pathetic unless he starts charging for it?

<comment><USER8> A Randian begging for money is pathetic. He either did a 180 on his principles or he's just ignoring them (exactly as Rand told people not to do).

And it's not like he wrote a paper explaining why it turns out Rand is wrong after all.

I'm not the only one to think this:

[http://knol.google.com/k/why-ayn-rand-would-decry-jimmy- wale...](http://knol.google.com/k/why-ayn-rand-would-decry-jimmy-wales- wikipedia#)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't blame him. He has a celebrity asset. Seems reasonable to cash in.

</comment><comment><USER11> Am I a bad person to want to punch Jimmy Wales in the junk after those horrible "I look like Larry Ellison and I want your money" banner ads?</comment>


Konga: The Emergence of an African Technology Powerhouse - <AUTHOR> http://cyberomin.github.io/startup/2016/01/07/african-powehouse-1.html <comment><USER2> Whilst your endeavors seem noble and ambitious, your title is self-promoting, clickbait and makes claims unsubstantiated by facts and figures. Why is Konga a technology powerhouse? What markets and industry does it dominate to warrant such a term as powerhouse? Just because you are building this and that doesn't make you a powerhouse.

I am African too and I love my people, but constant endearment such as this when you haven't accomplished much in terms of traction, market share or profit is why people don't take our tech sector seriously. Your tech stack or even number of products do not make you a tech powerhouse. Time to get real

<comment><USER3> He said technology powerhouse not, business powerhouse. I don't see how traction, market share or profit come in here. But for the record, Konga is moving fast in terms of traction and has a fair share of the Nigerian market, this is a country of over 100 Million people with more than 16% online and increasing. If you live in Nigeria you should know this, I really doubt that you live in Africa. I am not for endearment but if you do the maths, Konga is headed towards profitability that's for sure.

Sources:

[http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet- users/nigeria/](http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/nigeria/)

[http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria- popula...](http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria-population/)

<comment><USER2> So what is a technology powerhouse? I would love to hear your definition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's good to know that Nigerian tech companies are now building stuff with really high standards. I always respected Konga after Omin - an engineer gave a talk on an app he did for the stock market. I think it would be a fun place to work. Do they have any openings for front-end engineers?

<comment><USER4> Hi @coderken,

Thank you for the kind words. Per an opening, please check the about page of my blog, send me an email and I will make introductions.

Once again, thank you. Celestine Omin.

<comment><USER3> oops, didn't even realized it was you. I hardly check out usernames on HN, I just go for the content because most usernames are usually weird.</comment></comment></comment>


What to Expect at the Independent Particulate Matter Review Panel Meeting - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ucsusa.org/gretchen-goldman/what-to-expect-at-the-independent-particulate-matter-review-panel-meeting <comment><AUTHOR> The meat of the event has occurred, and the livestreams are reviewable on Youtube. This information is in the article, but might not be obvious. [https://youtu.be/wpodC23hJnQ](https://youtu.be/wpodC23hJnQ) is day 1 and [https://youtu.be/Y4LHvEAllrk](https://youtu.be/Y4LHvEAllrk) is day 2.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I actually make a living from sites like freelancer.com - <AUTHOR>

Hi Guys,<p>I want to leave my job and focus on my startup, however I need some income. Is it possible to get 2-3 days worth of income as a web designer and developer on sites like freelancer.com? They seem filled with indian development companies charging almost nothing? <comment><USER2> I evacuated from (my hometown) New Orleans just prior to hurricane Katrina, leaving a startup that hadn't paid me for months. I used freelancer.com (then getafreelancer.com) for about a year to get started on my own (in Oklahoma, long story).

It was a horrible experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone, for the reasons already mentioned (impossible competition, losing rates). But I made contacts that led to later work, and to this day I am working full-time at a good rate for a client that originally traces to that site.

My strategy was to make a "niche," specifically, a focus on quality over speed and price. I crafted custom letters for each bid, and my "English skills" paid off in some important cases.

So, if you have an alternative, I'd take it. If you don't, play the long game, and be zen about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It used to and I did for a while but the prices for work are so low you either have to work yourself dead or never get hired. I would really like to freelance, but it seems to be pretty hard to get work and sites like this don't work to make a living.</comment>


Secure Enough to Sin, Baghdad Is Back to Old Ways - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/world/middleeast/19baghdad.html

<comment><USER2> _"If I had my way, I'd destroy all the mosques and spread the whores around a little more", the detective said. "At least they're not sectarian"._

LOLOL, now that's a bombastic statement! Funniest thing I've read today...

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the same statement I noticed, after reading the earlier part of the article in fascination, that prompted me to submit the link. If people are thinking like that in Iraq, there is some possibility of big social change there.

<comment><USER3> That's how people think after being exposed to the consequences of religion.</comment></comment></comment>


List of fictional Microsoft companies - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_Microsoft_companies

<comment><USER2> of course this too has a wikipedia page :P</comment>


Towards Optimization-Safe Systems: Analyzing the Impact of Undefined Behavior - <AUTHOR> http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~xi/papers/stack-sosp13.pdf

<comment><USER2> More info: [https://css.csail.mit.edu/stack](https://css.csail.mit.edu/stack)

Code: [https://github.com/xiw/stack](https://github.com/xiw/stack)

</comment><comment><USER3> Simple solution: remove the undefined behaviour from your codebase.

<comment><USER4> Better solution, don't use languages that allow undefined behaviour.

<comment><USER5> Do you mean Haskell? because its compiler is very advanced and does complex optimizations.

<comment><USER6> It's semantically well-defined, though. The compiler will never change the value of your result, it will only discover more efficient ways to compute it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> C is deceivingly simple, I wonder how many people know about strict aliasing rules for example. To verify a C-program you should really 1. Do static analysis, preferable using many different tools, 2. Test on different optimization levels, 3. Test on different compilers.

</comment><comment><USER8> I posted this a while ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6230503](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6230503)

It still intrigues me that this happens, I do wonder if it is limited to languages like C or if it could conceivably happen in anything with an advanced runtime (think the porter stemmer bug that broke java7 on release)

Maybe we can introduce this to jit-spraying ? ([http://dsecrg.com/files/pub/pdf/HITB%20-%20JIT- Spray%20Attac...](http://dsecrg.com/files/pub/pdf/HITB%20-%20JIT- Spray%20Attacks%20and%20Advanced%20Shellcode.pdf))

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems to be a problem of language-lawyers coding compiler optimizations. Stop doing that. See also "Doctor, it hurst when I move my arm this way".

<comment><USER10> Not at all. The problem is that there are useful, effective optimizations allowed by the language spec which _also_ have unexpected consequences on subtly incorrect code.

Take an oversized shift, for example. The result is undefined, and for good reason. This allows an expression like x << y to be translated directly to a single machine instruction on just about every architecture. If there was a defined result for oversized shifts, then many architectures' instructions would not match it, forcing the compiler to generate inefficient code on those architectures.

For every example of a weird optimization causing problems, you can find an example of that same optimization making code go much faster.

You could say that compilers should value correctness over speed, and I would agree with you, _but:_ all of these optimizations _are_ correct. These are C compilers, and they compile C programs just fine. Where they have trouble is on programs that aren't actually valid C, but are just close. You can argue that they are being technically correct in a bad way, but then if you abandon the standard and decide that you should "correctly" compile a certain class of invalid programs, how do you decide what "correct" means?

<comment><USER11> Ordinarily, unsigned left shift silently shifts bits off the end.

      0xffffffff <<  0 is 0xffffffff
      0xffffffff <<  1 is 0xfffffffe
      ..
      0xffffffff << 30 is 0xc0000000
      0xffffffff << 31 is 0x80000000

It is defined to ignore overflow. Therefore, I claim that there's enough consistency here that we can extend the pattern to this:

      0xffffffff << 32 is 0x00000000

I claim this really is the mathematically correct answer. It's consistent with the most obvious pattern, and there are no other relevant patterns.

C has chosen to call this undefined behavior instead of returning the correct answer here, and I call that choosing optimization over correctness.

<comment><USER12> Are you so sure that all architectures that implement a left shift operator work the same way? For example, if you shift left by 'x' they might shift left by 'x modulo 32'

With C, you could still use the shift instruction on that architecture. With your 'correct answer', the compiler would have to output instructions to check the value of x prior to the shift.

Besides which, shifting is just one specific case. C has an easily understandable and documented behavior: overflow is _undefined_ , no matter how you achieve it. We don't have to go into horrific detail about what happens when you overflow with adds, multiplys, shifts and so on.

<comment><USER10> On some architectures it's the way he wants it (always zero on overflow), on some it's the way you suggest (shift is mod 32), and on some it just generates junk.

Bitshifting is an operation that people generally expect to be extremely fast. Adding a check on every single operation generated by a C compiler just to guarantee identical results upon overflow probably would not go over well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Warned of a Crash, Startups in Silicon Valley Narrow Their Focus - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/technology/warned-of-a-crash-start-ups-narrowed-their-focus.html <comment><USER2> For the past 10 months or so I've been part of a 3 person team that is bootstrapping. I can't count how many times I've been looked at like I have two heads when I tell someone that no we don't have funding, and we aren't looking for it, and we aren't planning on looking for it, and we're not entirely sure we even want it. And when I tell someone that we're more worried about building a sustainable business that can stand on its own I might as well be speaking a foreign language.

<comment><USER3> You seem to be attaching a moral axis to the decision on whether to raise capital. Consider that people look at you like you have two heads because you're making an irrational decision.

Capital usually comes with two strings -- giving up a part of your company, and giving up control (both of which are correlated, but not the same thing). In the current climate, if you could raise a seed round while giving away a minimal amount of your company and not giving away control, why wouldn't you?

Put a different way, how good would the terms have to get for you to take the money? In the limit case, if someone wrote you a million dollar check, no strings attached, what would you do? How far are the current market conditions from this scenario?

<comment><USER4> It has nothing to do with morality, it has to do with building a sustainable business while retaining full ownership. The notion that you absolutely need to accept funding is getting tired because it's not supported by facts and grounded in reality.

I am currently bootstrapping a business and I have been approached by VCs who _asked_ me to please take their money. I have turned them down because, as I politely told them, I don't need it, AND I am not looking to simply flip the company some day (no sane investor will invest unless the company can be sold in some form and they get their money back). Some people may also wish to avoid having a boss, and if you think your VC is not your boss in some capacity at least, you're in for a rude awakening.

Calling someone's decision to avoid raising money irrational and attaching labels (morality?) is presumptuous. There are certain goals that are incompatible with accepting funding, such as: operating a lifestyle business, not reporting to anyone, freedom etc. I am not sure what's so difficult to understand about that.

<comment><USER5> > There are certain goals that are incompatible with accepting funding, such > as: operating a lifestyle business, not reporting to anyone, freedom etc. I > am not sure what's so difficult to understand about that.

Nothing wrong with it at all; but keep in mind you are posting on the message boards of an organization (YCombinator) that is deeply invested in the Silicon Valley venture ecosystem. The "growth at all costs" mentality is bound to be quite prevalent among the posters on here as a result. It's just the audience that HN draws.

<comment><USER6> > It's just the audience that HN draws.

The content of this thread seems to contradict this claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like a lot of the "easy money" in early rounds comes from institutional seed investors like SV Angel, who are happy to hand you a $100k note with a good story and a bit of traction.

The problem I see with this is that their willingness to do that is tied to the performance of their early investments that have turned into unicorns. So for SV Angel for example, that would be Snapchat. As long as the unicorns are riding high at valuations that are obscene multiples of the initial VC investment, the VC can afford to make more small, early stage investments. If the goal is a 10x average return on the fund, then the higher the valuation of its unicorns, the more it can invest small sums in the "long tail" of early investments.

The problem is that as soon as a unicorn sees a devaluation, the calculation of average return decreases, and therefore there is less money available for that long tail.

This is how I see it, anyway, with a fairly unsophisticated understanding of the mechanisms. I'm curious to hear other input on this perspective.

<comment><USER8> Evernote is a bad datapoint for the Times to use as a starting point for some tech bubble tea leaf reading. The company was mismanaged for nearly 4 years. The founder and CEO walked or was pushed out over a year ago. And rightly so. It was like it was run by someone with A.D.D. For example they opened an online store that sold a bunch of branded Evernote junk, pens etc. including Evernote socks... They kept adding new features when core features were broken for several versions of the app. In some cases resulting in data lost, eroding customer confidence in the product.

The tech winter came and took out VC funds, valuations, board seats and executives. It also slowed down the rate of new startups and IPO's. It didn't crush companies like reporters speculated or wished. This time companies that received large amounts of funding unlike the crazy web 1.0 companies of 1999. These companies have finical planners, oversight and accountants. This gave them some buffer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Silicon Valley is in NEED of a crash.

It is touted as a hub of "innovation" but I do not see it. There are exceptions that exist, scientific and medical companies perhaps, but the majority of tech-startups are not that at all, they are a fucking FUGAZI. They are speculative companies that are all about hype and getting an "exit" someday. Steve Jobs (as an example) is regarded as a "deity", a god of Silicon Valley. Because of wealth? Because the iPhone / iPod / iWhatever had a simple design? Step outside, the iPhone is used as a vessel for narcissism. Facebook and Instagram, two billion dollar companies in the valley, those two are the TEXTBOOK narcissism vessels of HUMAN HISTORY. These tech-startups are an absolute pathetic coping mechanism for humanity, they are not innovative or special.

<comment><USER10> I agree that Silicon Valley is in NEED of a crash.

But NOT because there is no innovation. But because there is a _lot_ of innovation and that real innovation is getting squished by get rich schemes (I have no other descriptions for some startups). This is like with all bubbles: fundamentals will start it but then speculators will take over causing the bubble.

<comment><USER9> You and I have different ideas of innovation. You are likely thinking in a capitalistic sense of a view (disclaimer before I get thrashed on: I am not thinking capitalistically) perhaps you can name me a few particular up and coming companies YOU think are doing imperative, highly-important and highly- beneficial things for us humans? Companies that, 10 years from now, will be so imperative to our survival and well-being that they will fit directly into the Maslow Heirarchy of Needs?

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Ma...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Maslow's_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg/2000px- Maslow's_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg.png)

I scroll through Tech Crunch regularly. My honest observation: 95% of tech- startups are, as I said earlier, F-U-G-A-Z-I-S. Companies that fuel narcissism. Companies that are spin-offs of companies that fuel narcissism. Companies that perform services for other FUGAZI companies. Ad companies. Companies that provide streaming, so millions of Americans can watch Kim Kardashian on their Mac. I don't want to be a philosophical hippy, I am not one of those, but nobody here can deny that all of this is a pathetic coping mechanism.

Why are we coping? We are coping because we are a too primitive and unevolved monkey species to take anything to the next parallel. Even something such as space exploration is science-fiction, meeting a different species of life? Science fiction. Some sort of child pipe-dream we've learned from Hollywood (another FUGAZI)

How about something to help us find a slight meaning to existence. Isn't this the root-goal, at it's core? I look out with clear focus on the surroundings, but I do not understand. Then I go back to FUGAZI-land. It's imperative I figure out myself, but society is an obstacle (despite it's perks)

To sum it up: 95% of Silicon Valley is a primitive coping mechanism.

<comment><USER11> It's hard to take you seriously when you are being so antagonistic. You can make the argument that Silicon Valley is lacking in innovation, but you don't need to poison that argument right out the door by pushing a worldview that these companies all exist to fuel narcissism, thereby implicitly insulting everyone who likes these products.

I don't use things like SnapChat and Facebook myself, but I also don't act as though these companies aren't innovating, and i don't shame their users. Perfectly reasonable, intelligent, kind and well-adjusted enjoy browsing Facebook every day, and there is nothing wrong with that. And have you seen what's coming out of (for example) Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research labs recently? Is legitimate progress not innovation because it supports capitalist processes that you disagree with?

In short, you're being judgemental and instead of coming across as passionate and self-aware, you're coming across as puerile and angry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the article: (failed startup) "providing valet parking with the touch of a smartphone button".

What's ending, one can hope, is the idea that attaching some low-end labor- intensive service to a smartphone app is a "tech business".

<comment><USER13> The best ones actually are similar to what you are highlighting, but started by someone with a Phd in physics [1] and/or an MD that they walked away from to get in on the lottery.

[1] Note that I do not know what the job market is for people with Phd's in Physics so pick another advanced degree as an example. I do know the market for MD's though.

<comment><USER14> Not pure physics, but I know 2 astrophysics PhDs well, one works in publishing, the other is a programmer.

Neither does anything particularly astrological, both have mentioned that it sounds way cooler than it is practical outside of academia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Katie Benner has written some good stories, but I'm suspicious of articles like this, because they insist almost irrationally on finding a trend that they can make a pronouncement about.

The truth is, startups are all over the place. Some are wasting cash, and some are trying to build sustainable businesses, and some are trying to get acquihired. And all of those things are going on all the time.

VCs have raised record levels of investment from LPs this year. And that money will get pushed into the system whether Bill Gurley wants the competition or not.

The people who harp on an impending crash -- and they have been harping for quite some time now -- seem desperate for something to say about tech. In secular terms, tech's star is on the rise and everyone knows it, so the real news _would_ be a crash. But the crash, like Godot, refuses to arrive. Actually, many parts of tech are pretty damn healthy, and moving fast, AI and robotics being just two.

<comment><USER16> And there is a correlation between those who don't have time (or exposure) to talk to the press for fluffy articles about SV... because they are too busy building a real business that makes money. Meeting clients, investors, hiring, etc. PR is only on some startups lists and they are usually consumer plays which are always riskier (such as valet parking apps).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There won't be a crash until the rivers of money being pumped out by the central banks of the world stops. The entire VC industry is just a tiny cork floating on a gale-whipped sea.

I do think that it is getting really hard to break through the noise with a new concept. There are just so many companies chasing the same eyeballs that it is really hard to get the traction needed to build a unicorn no matter how much money you raise. At this point it might be better to go hyper-niche and bootstrap.

<comment><USER18> Well, from the point of view of the Central Banks, creating any kind of economic activity is a plus, regardless if it'll be viable longterm for it's employees or if its "true innovation" (not noise). So the money faucets are working as intended. Given how anemic our economy is compared to other post- recession economies, I suspect it'll stay that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Crash is going to happen. Most of these startups are not run by people with business sense who know how to make a company profitable. They are raised by people who know how to tell stories to raise easy money. The money is not there anymore, soon enough they'll run out and won't get a lifeline.

<comment><USER20> The good ones know how to tell a story... a lot of them can't even do that. They just have wealthy friends/family or made some money from another deal where they got lucky and think they can do a startup.

I work at a consulting company and it's amazing. Some of the customers come in and have five employees, no product, no story, but a rich dad.

I have literally seen a millionaire dad sit across their kid in a meeting trying to explain what minimum viable product is and ended up giving in and paying to have their over-blown product made anyway. It's worth noting that we also explain and strongly encourage the client to stick to MVP, we never recommend overly broad feature sets.

Not saying those are common but they do exist.

<comment><USER21> It's so odd. Most of the attraction I see in starting a business is the problem of bootstrapping it—there are many business ideas that are attractive, and the game is in separating the viable ones from the busts. I'm not sure why you would start one if you really just want to be a PM and not think about the cash flow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Evernote is not a startup any longer. I understand the grey area, but as an industry we need to reach some kind of consensus on this word.

<comment><USER2> I've basically stopped using the word startup because at this point it seems to apply primarily to companies that only care about vanity metrics and nothing else. The word has been hijacked by investors and founders who want companies to appear profitable so they can cash out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> At least based on HN coverage there seems to be a recently a wave of stories about scammers and wanterpreneurs, some questions about "signs of failed startups", warnings about red flags and so on.

Is increasing scammer activity a sign of the tail-end of a market hype?

<comment><USER24> > _Is increasing scammer activity a sign of the tail-end of a market hype?_

Absolutely, it's a leading indicator. Fraud rates skyrocketed prior to the stock market crash in 1929 and then again prior to the 2008 crash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is just silicon valley growing up and joining the actual business world. It used to be a blank check, now people are asking questions about finances, valuation. VCs, startups were some super risky exotic venture. Now that it's become more commonplace, more common business controls are being put into place. Startup == small agile business.

This is a good sign, in my opinion. It means the word startup is no longer some rocket to the stars but means a small business with bootstrapped capital that may or may not make it. Like every other small business tbh. VC has become a legitimate vehicle for investment and returns and not some exotic moonshot project. Therefore, financials are now questioned.

<comment><USER26> That's an odd thing to say, this exact same scenario happened before in the 90s in the exact same place for the exact same reasons.

It's called the dot-com bubble if you're too young to know about it:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot- com_bubble](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble)

There's lots of good books and stories about it if you're into tech and VC stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What defines a startup? Everything that did not IPO yet is referred to as a startup. Sure everything starts at some point, but should Dropbox, Uber and Airbnb still be called start ups? Aren't these large companies?

<comment><USER13> Better yet, is any new business a startup? Having been around business for a long long time I tend to see it as fitting a particular mold in terms of tech type product offering, young staff, desire to get venture funding, talking the talk and walking the walk. I think I know it when I see it but I can't even think of all of the qualifiers.

<comment><USER28> Yep, the word "startup" has the same definition to me. It's more of a description of the culture than how new or scrappy the business is. I worked at a "startup" that had been around for 10 years, had no plans of exiting, and was sustainable, but had a very young staff, a keg in the kitchen, and pressured it's young developers to work late for shitty pizza.

I think some small businesses are jumping on the startup train so that they can attract kids right of college.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it really not a caricature that people in SV wear jeans and their startup's stock t-shirt with a blazer over it? People really dress like this?

<comment><USER30> Oh yeah. I could walk down the street and take pictures of people dressed like that right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Pretty off topic, but is Chris O'Neill huge? Or did they choose very small people to flank him in the photo for the article?

<comment><USER32> I wondered the same thing, even tried Googling his height. I think it's partly exaggerated by a somewhat-wide lens, and the two flankers leaning back in their chairs while he leans forward (nearer objects being represented as larger).

Also, he's probably huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What would be the best way to make money betting on a crash?

<comment><USER34> Get a high paying job in an overfunded startup. Save aggressively. Build alternative income streams.

If crash comes: ride it out on savings and alternative income streams.

If crash doesn't come: congratz, you're rich.

<comment><USER35> That doesn't sound right to me. As far as I can tell, for most positions, if you just care about money and are not counting on the IPO lottery, you're better off working at Google or Facebook (assuming you can get the job). In other words, overfunded startups aren't paying THAT much.

And even then, most people would not call you "rich" by Silicon Valley standards. I would say "rich" at a minimum requires you to be able to buy a house in Silicon Valley or SF.

<comment><USER34> This is true, my strategy hedges bets. Get enough cash to cover expenses and save a lot -> no downside. Still participate in the potential upside.

Low risk, high reward is the name of the game. A job at Google or Facebook, _if_ you can get it, is just as stable these days as a job at a startup is.

<comment><USER36> Depending on where you are, any job at $BIG_CORP is generally more stable than any startup I've worked for... at least outside SV. I've spent most of my life in the Phoenix area, and the job market for developers (outside late 2001 through mid 2002) has been very good, especially compared to cost of living. It's all been line of business work for the most part, and none of it too exciting. But it pays consistently. And does leave enough time to work on secondary projects.

I've never really seen the draw into the startup lottery, it just seems like a bad bet as an employee most of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash My main concern is that there are few investment avenues these days that provide a decent return without being extraordinarily risky. Stocks are stagnating. Bond yields are so dismal you have to invest in places like Turkey to see any sort of return - if it even happens.

That pretty much makes Silicon Valley the default place to get any bang for your buck. Investors in VC funds want to see returns. VCs want to keep investing in winners, getting more investment in their funds, and making good money along the way. People want to turn their sweat into gold so there is no shortage of aspirational entrepreneurs.

So it seems to me that if there is anything that could turn a cautious slowdown into a full-blown crash, it's a scarcity of decent investment options.

<comment><USER37> _Stocks are stagnating._

      * S&P500 YTD:    Up  6.7%
      * S&P500 1 Year: Up  9.7%
      * S&P500 5 Year: Up 85.4%

<comment><USER38> (EDIT: Didn't notice that the emphasis in parent is a quote from grandparent. So consider the numbers below to further support parent rather than contradict it)

Your numbers doesn't show that at all.

9.7% up in a year is roughly 0.775% average per month compounded. Assuming even growth through the year, which is obviously a simplification, to reach 9.7% at the end of the year you'd want to have appreciated 6.3% by now, so 6.7% doesn't sound all that bad.

85.4% over 5 years is roughly 13%/year compounded. Since 1950, the annualised average return of the S&P500 have fluctuated between -3.6% and 19.3% [1], so both the 1Y and 5Y are well within the norm. If 9.7% were to hold through a full decade, it'd still be far above the median per-decade averages.

[1] [http://www.simplestockinvesting.com/SP500-historical-real- to...](http://www.simplestockinvesting.com/SP500-historical-real-total- returns.htm)

<comment><USER39> I think you're missing the fact that the OP was responding to "rm -rf /" and saying that stocks have _not_ been stagnating.

<comment><USER38> Ah, yes, I didn't notice that the emphasis was meant to be a quote. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> How to keep the money machine going:

If one of your investors or potential acquirers is a big company and you already have contacts with them, get that company to do a Euro corporate bond issuance, and use the proceeds to buy your company

A) this is already happening

B) it isn't the strangest thing that has happened

Silicon Valley downturn talk is ignoring broader macroeconomic fundamentals, at this point in time.

Economically unsound? SURE! Are you in a privileged enough position to make a lot of money? DEFINITELY!

<comment><USER41> This is why I don't think a 2001-style crash is coming. A slowdown maybe, but not too hard a landing.

Since 2008 global central banks have made it abundantly clear that deflation in any major asset class will not be permitted. If it begins to occur, governments and central banks will intervene with infinite QE and other actions that will restore "confidence" in the market and prop up the asset. In some cases that amounts to actually entering stock, bond, and RE markets and buying stuff with printed money, or giving printed money directly to banks with incentives to do the same.

Major players in this unwritten pact include the USA, China, and the EU. It's so large you might almost think of it as WWIII, but being fought with monetary policy (mostly) instead of guns. It's not really a classical bubble but (IMHO) more properly thought of as an economic war. The loser of this global conflict will be the first nation or economic union unable to pump any further. At this point the loser will experience hyper-deflationary collapse and will be bought by the winners. Either that or the war will go hot with the loser being forced to substitute military action for economic might.

Startup stock is obviously not on the list of TBTF assets, but it certainly rides on others like stocks, bonds, and real estate. To the extent that startup markets are international, dips will be seen by foreign actors as buying opportunities. Chinese money is already flooding into SV and tech in general. EU money is there as well, albeit more quietly, since right now real yields in the EU are in some cases actually _negative_ and people are looking for ways to diversify more globally. Ploughing some money into high-risk assets like startup stock can be part of a larger diversification push, and the startup world is so tiny compared to the truly massive markets of bonds, stocks, and real estate, that all it takes is a _little bit_ of this behavior to keep the music playing.

Edit: add in the fact that startup crowdfunding is going live and you now have a second firehose opening up. I do think things have gotten frothy but I don't think it's over.

<comment><USER42> Clearly, supply and demand are out of whack - there is too much capital ready to produce stuff, and not enough consumer cash to buy all that which can be produced.

And yet central banks keep pumping money into the supply side. It boggles the mind. Why? Why not pump the money into the demand side?

<comment><USER41> It's ideology. That would be "giving handouts" to "lazy people," etc.

Oddly enough the strongest support base for this ideology is among those who would benefit from pumping the demand side the most. Many of the wealthier people I've talked to or who I've heard speak on the subject seem to get that we are in a demand-constrained economy.

IMHO it emerges from the fact that human beings are genetically programmed for scarcity. When we feel threatened we tend to respond by pushing for others to have _less_. "I'm poor, so you should be poorer." Our emotional and social brains simply do not compute abundance and definitely do not compute large- scale economics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> When the New York Times can see it coming...

<comment><USER44> They are wildly guessing based on the past in my view. MarketWatch.com has an author that's been predicting the market crash for the past 3-4 years. Eventually he will be right.

<comment><USER43> NYT hasn't been.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> A welcome change:

> _Other entrepreneurs have a newfound air of practicality, no longer shooting > for their companies to be the next tech behemoth like Facebook._

I haven't been hearing much about raising lately — Is it still the case that you are expected to lay out a path to $1Bn in your pitch deck, no matter what your company does?

</comment><comment><USER46> Several VC funds were launched over the past few years. Assuming they're ~7 year funds, we're going to see an increase in LP and board pressure over the next few years, as these funds come to maturity.

</comment><comment><USER47> Employment is to succeed in job. Entrepreneurship is to succeed in life.

</comment><comment><USER48> Lean and profitable is the new black.</comment>


How can I use my masters degree to get a higher salary? - <AUTHOR> http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/10343/how-can-i-use-my-masters-degree-to-get-a-higher-salary

<comment><USER2> working for behemoths</comment>


Lisp has average performance in Google AI Competition - <AUTHOR> http://jcole.posterous.com/lisp-has-average-performance-in-google-ai-com

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but I don't think there's enough data on the Lisp side to interpret much. From memory, wasn't it a few dozen Lisp entries against well over a thousand for Java?

Raw statistical uncertainty aside, if we're trying to judge the languages themselves it would need to be done with programmers skilled with their chosen language. I'd guess that most of the Java entries were by people that knew Java reasonably well from working with it every day, but I wouldn't be surprised if many in the Lisp section were people that had little or no prior experience with Lisp and decided that this would be a fine opportunity to learn it.

<comment><AUTHOR> There were only a handful of Lisp entrants while Java had more than any other language in the competition. I agree with you that we shouldn't read much into this. I also think we shouldn't be reading much into the posts about how it was Lisp that won the competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> ... because it is hard to compete with strongly typed, optimized in runtime code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea. If you get the same program in two different languages, you would expect the faster language to win, it can do a more thorough search. I glanced at the results of the previous competition and the first page was drenched in C++. It is too bad that Clojure wasn't offered as a language in this competition, I remember hearing that it's performance is right up there with Java.

Maybe I should do a on the correlation between language speed and ranking next.</comment></comment>


The ethics and lessons of Readability - <AUTHOR> http://code.ahren.org/bit/the-ethics-and-lessons-of-readability <comment><USER2> It's very sad that there are so much sites with poor readability. I close site very often few seconds after it's loaded because I don't want to read such ugly stuff. I'm delighted if site looks well. I guess it's because design tools evolve and we must wait a bit before good readability becomes standard. You know, few years ago we were happy if there was any text on website at all. Maybe one day MS Word documents are going to look like LaTeX ones. I hope so.

Thanks very much for those "read later" stuff. I think I might find them useful. I'll see.

"I am very sceptical of the euphemistic suggestion that the primary purpose of these sites is to enable postponement of reading." - You write. Well, many things weren't initialy supposed to be used way they are, but as they evolve, things change. It could be so with that stuff too.</comment>


The Chevrolet Bolt Has Totally Trumped Tesla's Model 3 - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602365/the-chevrolet-bolt-has-totally-trumped-teslas-model-3/ <comment><USER2> > Though it has only a small edge in terms of range, GM's all-electric car > will get to market well before Tesla's Model 3 does.

Meh. This kind of sounds like the 800-pound gorilla boasting that it can lift slightly more weight than the spider monkey.

And before we declare a winner, let's see when, and what, the two companies actually ship. How will they compare on price, range, reliability, safety, comfort, software features, handling, etc?

Nobody knows yet.

Gorilla projects great victory over spider monkey!

<comment><USER3> Can they use the same charging stations, or are we approaching a forked situation like iPhone vs android?

Also - can someone who owns an electric vehicle answer a question on highway driving? Basically I'm curious how quiet the interior is at highway speeds vs a regular ICE car. Ie, how much of the noise comes from the ICE car engine, vs the sounds from just the road and wind?

<comment><USER4> It's a hard comparison to make. While NVH is a priority for OEMs making the customer perceive that there's some serious power under the hood is a priority as well.

Most manufacturers tune the exhaust system to be fairly loud at the top of the power band (if you buy an "ultimate driving machine" you don't want it to sound like a Prius). Coasting on flat ground or down a hill (low load)they'll be about the same but flooring it up one and you're gonna hear stuff.

As you get into more SUV like shapes and designs that aren't dominated by "use the least energy (gasoline or otherwise) to get from A to B" electric vehicles lose a lot of the advantage at higher speeds where wind and tire noise is more dominant.

Additionally a many high end vehicles have such good sound deadening that they employ various tricks to increase engine noise in the cabin (laying sound through the speakers, tubes that resonate at particular frequencies)

If you have a vehicle that's fairly quiet at speed something as simple as tread pattern, a roof rack or bike rack may be enough to be the dominant noise source regardless of drive-train. Larger than that is road quality. A huge chunk of the population in the US drives on roads that are rough enough that any difference in NVH between a Model S and non EV of similar price is meaningless.

It would be interesting to do an NVH comparison of high end sedans though.</comment></comment></comment>