Ask HN: How to choose a name for a web app? - <AUTHOR>

I'm nearing completion of a web application planned to launch near the end of May. The only problem, well one of the problems, is that I'm completely lacking any ideas for a name. I don't think I'm alone, but I find this to be one of the hardest parts of developing. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas, methods, thoughts, or anything at all worth discussing on this topic.<p>Thanks..! <comment><USER2> Pretend you are in a rock band or own an ad agency that pretends it's a rock band. Give yourself a non-sequitur of a name that doesn't attempt to communicate your already in-definable style.

If you're stumped, take an adjective and a noun that don't go together; combine. Strawberry Frog. Velvet Underground. Zeus Jones. Led Zeppelin. Rick James. Got the hang of it?

Now check to see if your name has a .com yet? It does? Eliminate all vowels and check again. Still stuck? Put a few of them back in. Got it? Good.

(If you STILL can't get a dot come with no vowels, consider making your app a mobile one and get the oft-ignored .mobi address. People will make fun, but stick to your guns. You're an innovator.)

Let's walk through a demo, just to make sure we're all on the same page:

1\. Adjective: Tasty, Noun: Shirt. 2\. TastyShirt.com? No. TstyShrt.com No. TastyShrt.com Yes. 3\. Profit.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget, you can always take a word and add an r to the end. Flickr, coordinatr, tshirtmonstr, Ycombinatr...

Actually, don't. It's a fad and it should be over soon.

For me, the biggest issue was making sure I had a .com to go with it. Go to instantdomainsearch.com and just start typing as things come to your mind.

There are other sites that automatically mash words together and check their availability, so search for these generators. There are a few generators already posted here, so be sure to check them out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=91005>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=114920>

<http://searchyc.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> First, some meta-advice: start the process early and let it go for a long time. Keep thinking about it and talking to people about it. I find that good name ideas come over time and come in spurts.

There have been some good name posts on news.yc, so search for those. What I strive for:

\--As short as possible. \--Memorable (often through rhyming, alliteration, repetition, etc.) \--Something people can spell. \--Something related in some way to the app (this is just my preference). \--Easy to pronounce (e.g. people know where the accent goes). \--Good connotations (or at least not bad).

There is also some psychology involved in certain sounds, but I forget the specifics of at the moment--search for it.

Finally, I find instantdomainsearch.com, a rhyming dictionary, webster, and a thesaurus useful tools in the process.

</comment><comment><USER6> Follow brainstorming techniques. Write everything down, no matter how bad. Write down fragments that characterize your idea. Explore metaphors: If your site is about finance, maybe think about up/down movement, growth, even gambling and excitement. Visualize these themes and keep writing things down.

I found that you don't want your name to be too descriptive (e.g. I find the name "FriendFeed" way too descriptive and boring), but on the other hand it shouldn't be yet another five-letter, random-string, 2.0 name.

Twitter is nice because it plays very loosely with disseminating information to whoever's listening out there. It's better than smsfeedr.

Google is nice because they've identified a large number as something that loosely characterizes what they do.

</comment><comment><USER7> Easy!

1\. Pick one word that is somewhat related to what you do. Make sure it ends in "ER" or "ED".

2\. Add .com to the end of it

3\. Drop at least one of the vowels, preferably the last one.

4\. Register that domain!

Bonus points if you can find a word that ends in a top level domain. Then, just add a random dot anywhere else in the name. And Poof! You now have a three level domain that nobody will ever remember how to type in - but hey, it's sooooooo web 2.0.

</comment><comment><USER8> What I do is create a list of words that you can use to describe what your site is, does, promotes, enhances, etc. Start combining some of the words together, keeping it as simple as possible. Alter some words, like changing f to ph, and play on their meaning. Use a thesaurus and a dictionary.

Don't get too stressed over it. Often, the name will jump off the page at the most random of times.

<comment><USER9> Also, go through all the domain suffixes you can register and look for ideas. Sometimes you can get a memorable domain name that way. Sites like last.fm have done a good job of this.

Free (unregistered as of this writing!) example: stepinsi.de .

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I threw together a script that could try to coin words (say, by taking any letter, plus a suffix that your really like) or attach words together, and then check that against whois.

[http://daniellefong.com/2008/03/01/on-naming-startups-and- ru...](http://daniellefong.com/2008/03/01/on-naming-startups-and-ruby- hackery/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Get a group of friends together, a bottle of wine and a laptop to record the stupid things you guys come up with. The next morning go through the list and whoola... most likely you have a good name that has a domain available.

Good Luck, Chris

</comment><comment><USER12> Two sites that have been posted here before that might be useful:

<http://www.nameboy.com/>

<http://www.makewords.com/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well its a finance / wall street focused site so if anyone wants to lend a creative hand, I'm more than open to suggestions. Thanks..

<comment><USER13> Dollr.

<comment><USER13> (I don't honestly think it's a good name, but it fits with the pattern at least. Most of the names I see I find kind of tasteless. I much prefer names not based on misspellings.)

<comment><USER14> what pattern?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd just like to thank everyone again for their input. Hopefully soon ill be posting with not only a name but a live link.

</comment><comment><USER15> I like to go to tdnam.com and click on 'Closeouts' sometimes there are really good names in there

</comment><comment><USER16> I just got a sweet idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. That is a good idea. Never knew registrars offered returns on domain names before. I usually use namecheap to register because the name transferring is so easy, which is really helpful when it comes time to sell. I think dynadot offers that too.

<comment><USER16> You're welcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some of these suggestions are awful.

This explosion of companies named phoodcaphe.com and this dropping the e is not a good trend. It's cheap knockoffs of a few successful companies and products that did it well, like iMac and Flickr. You will not get the same advantages is terms of uniqueness and descriptiveness unless you do it well, which, if you're using nameboy, you're not.

Also, if you aren't inclined towards verbal skills you really should delegate the decision to someone who is. You need a visionary idea that distills all the hard creative and technical work you did down into a word or two. Harder then haiku or poetry, and the result of that decision is going to be the lens through which the world views your technical work. A bad decision here could cripple your company, and a good one could make everything from funding to securing partners to advertising easier. Take it as seriously as any other part of your business.

<comment><USER18> "explosion of companies named phoodcaphe.com and this dropping the e is not a good trend. It's cheap knockoffs of a few successful companies and products that did it well"

Some of the names are awful, I agree. But most of these companies -- including Flickr -- are using this kind of technique because all the domain names in the world are already taken. It's a defensive/desperation thing.

<comment><USER17> I must of got really lucky because we got our first choice (for facing customers) and second choice (for facing Doctors) and third choice (for facing investors/internal). I also got the websites I wanted for my music composition hobby. Not one person had anything we went for across .com, net, or org.

Our conversation went like this. "Blah blah" "Blah Blah" "So we're settled, we want these names?" "Yup" "I'll see if they are available." "Cool" "OK, we're golden. All done" "I'm gonna register the name for my music studio too." "Cool" "Done"</comment></comment></comment>


Is this level of generalised incompetence accurate? - barry-cotter https://mobile.twitter.com/patio11/status/1110296385629241344?s=20 <comment> barry-cotter > "70% of businesses don't do user research... and this is basically constant > over revenue buckets from $0 to $50M+."

> I think there are a _surprising_ number of things you could replace for > "user research" here, in that meat-and-potatoes things that are well- > written-about seem like they're technologies which should exist > everywhere... but they're not.

> Also worth noting that there are many businesses which have several genres > of meat-and-potatoes things missing but they do one or several things well > enough to cause success in spite of that.

If this is accurate shouldn't it be possible to go from nothing to charging $10,000 per consulting engagement in under a year? Do one of the shorter coding boot camps that will actually teach you a useful amount, like App Academy, then do a course on conversionxl, like their conversion optimisation "mini-degree"[1] and then do a lot of sales calls?

[1][https://conversionxl.com/institute/](https://conversionxl.com/institute/)</comment>


Functor, Applicative, and Monad - <AUTHOR> https://typeslogicscats.gitlab.io/posts/functor-applicative-monad.html <comment><USER2> I am the author of this post, please ask me any questions.

Reddit discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cy35zz/functor...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cy35zz/functor_applicative_and_monad/)

My HN submission (which didn't receive any traction): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20850144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20850144)</comment>


GOOG engineer admits to "strong indication that it is likely" he copied Sun code - <AUTHOR> http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/09/google-engineer-admits-strong.html <comment><USER2> Florian Mueller alert.

<comment><USER3> This was copied/pasted verbatim from the court documents.

The Google "engineer" used work at Sun and is currently Google's Chief Java Architect.

"Q. BY MR. JACOBS: Do you have a recollection of accessing Sun code while you were working on TimSort?

A. I don't have a recollection, but I'm perfectly willing to believe that I did. You know, I think the similarity of the signature, the fact that, you know, the three arguments are in the same order and have the same name, you know, is a strong indication that it is likely that I did."

<comment><USER2> Sure, but there is a lot more in those documents than just these samples.

It is very easy to skew a picture one way or the other by cherry picking a pile of paper and mr. Mueller has a long enough history that I'd be wary of anything he produces.

<comment><USER3> cherry picked or not and regardless of your opinion of Florian Mueller, that admission is important and pretty damning. Considering this guy used to work at Sun and is supposed to be Google's Chief Java Architect.

<comment><USER2> He wrote the original. It's not as if this is some guy that went and copied SUN code wholesale and it's not as if we're talking about the core of android here, it's _9_ lines.

Ok, damages: $500 should do it, and that's probably an overestimation. If there is wholesale copyright infringement I'm sure we'll get to it but this particular instance is hardly reason for a general alert.

<comment><USER3> I think this strengthen's Oracle's case against Google. and it shows willful infringement on the part of Google.

if you consider this admission together with the other evidence against Google, it's pretty damning.

 _an October 2005 email written by Andy Rubin, Google's senior VP of mobile, concerning Sun, which held the patents at issue here before being acquired by Oracle. "If Sun doesn't want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language – or – 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way."_

 _The second, this email from Google engineer Tim Lindholm (who was previously a senior Java engineer at Sun) to Rubin in August of 2010: "What we've actually been asked to do (by Larry and Sergey) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome. We've been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need."_

even the Judge agrees.

 _As Alsup told Oracle's attorneys moments after reading it in open court, "That's a pretty good document for you. That ought to be … big for you at the trial." Indeed — particularly if Rubin has to explain it on the stand. "You know what they used to say about Joe Alioto," Alsup said, referring to the successful antitrust attorney. "In a big case like this, he only needed two documents: He needed a document like this, the one I just read, and the Magna Carta. And he won every case. And you are going to be on the losing end of this document with Andy Rubin on the stand. … If willful infringement is found, there are profound implications for a permanent injunction. So you better think about that."_

[http://allthingsd.com/20110727/old-email-may-bite-google- in-...](http://allthingsd.com/20110727/old-email-may-bite-google-in-java- patent-suit/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Startup lawyer who will take on marijuana software startup? - <AUTHOR>

I've talked to a few good Bay Area startup lawyers who are interested but ultimately don't want to take on a client who will be creating software for marijuana dispensaries.<p>Does anybody have any suggestions for a good startup lawyer who might be willing to take this on?<p>(I'm also looking for a marijuana lawyer for help complying with state laws. The startup lawyer is just for standard technology startup legal needs) <comment><USER2> Go with Raza Lawrence. He double majored in Physics and Philosophy, and pursued Law at Harvard. He's a first cousin of mine, and actually co-wrote a sizable article on marijuana litigation for Hustler, of all places.

[http://lasdopestattorney.com/firm-overview/attorney- profiles](http://lasdopestattorney.com/firm-overview/attorney-profiles)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the recommendation! Do you know if he has done work for early stage startups before? Finding a lawyer who is great at startup things (incorporation, fundraising, options etc...) and marijuana law would be great but I'm expecting that I'll have to have two specialists for those very different fields.

<comment><USER2> I'm unsure, but I know he is very tech-savvy. More than me, frankly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I use Khurshid Khoja and his firm Greenbridge and definitely recommend them for cannabis industry work. [http://www.greenbridgelaw.com/about- greenbridge/our-attorney...](http://www.greenbridgelaw.com/about- greenbridge/our-attorneys/khurshid-khoja/)

</comment><comment><USER4> What do you need a lawyer for? Corp docs? or consulting for the laws re: marijuana?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both. Most likely a startup lawyer for standard corp docs and a marijuana lawyer for state marijuana laws.

The main issue is finding a startup lawyer who is willing to take on a startup who is serving the marijuana industry.

<comment><USER4> You don't need a lawyer for corporate documents. Legalzoom works fine... California C Corp (if your exit is acquisition and Delaware Corp (if your exit is public). Most VC's have their own army of lawyers and if you need a lawyer when you have a offer in hand, then any will do.

Those two lawyers will be very different. A lawyer familiar with the drug laws will understand a jurisdictions ordinances and the states criminal code. Probably better to get a consultant... give him some equity for subject matter expert.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would you change about Craigslist's design? - <AUTHOR>

Curious how others feel about this. Craigslist has a sort of 1999 feel to it. What would you change about its design, if anything? <comment><USER2> I would first make it so that uploaded images aren't mangled so badly. If you ever look closely at an image, you'll notice awful jpeg artifacts. This makes the fact that they're really small even worse.

I would probably also improve the typography (in a subtle way.) Since the site is basically all text, the text that's there ought to look nice. I don't really have a problem with the colors.

Fighting the spam problem is tricky, and I think solving it involves changing the business model, not the design. (I don't have an idea of how I would solve it.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Categorization of results.. -if I search 'macbook' I would like to see results by various buckets -- Price, Year, etc. -if I search 'sofa set' I would like to see results by Brand, Price, Year

</comment><comment><USER4> I would change the design to encourage more reporting, and make it harder for bots to crawl.

</comment><comment><USER5> for some of my searches, 80% of the stuff is spam. Would like the flagged spam to be moved to the bottom.

Many posts show up every single day. Would like the duplicates to be prevented.

If it worked more like HN that would be great.

</comment><comment><USER6> i would add colors. when you go to the website, the first color that hits you is the disgusting link colored blue. that is very a very 1999 look. add color basically. oh, and take away the peace sign favicon.

</comment><comment><USER7> More buttons. Clicking on anchors is very anti-fitt's law.

</comment><comment><USER8> The design honestly doesn't matter to me. I barely go to CL anymore because there's way too many duplicate/spam/scam posts.

</comment><comment><USER9> Absolutely nothing.

<comment><USER10> strangely enough i agree with this pretty straight-to-the-point comment. Craiglist is a good example of a good barebones design, and it's not to say craiglist is correct but they've placed importance on clear functionality over beautiful graphics. Others that come to mind following this similar pattern; reddit, hackernews, stackoverflow

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tow things:

no longer automatically remove posts that have been flagged - but show the ad and note to the user that it had been flagged N times.

This is due to the flag for removal abuse that people use to block others from seeing items for sale or places for rent to prevent competition.

Allow me to expand images on items.</comment>


Flip Feng Shui: A new cross-VM exploitation vector - <AUTHOR> https://www.vusec.net/projects/flip-feng-shui/ <comment><USER2> All I can think of when I see the acronym in the article is For Fuck's Sake...

From my understanding, this essentially allows an attacker to compromise specific memory of a victim VM by bit flipping, since the host uses shared memory for both if the contents are the same. This would allow the attacker to then change the contents of the memory to something malicious and the victim VM would not know.

Let me know if I'm wrong; I think this is essentially the attack based on my understanding of the article. I didn't watch the 5 minute OpenSSH video in the article, though.

<comment><USER3> Essentially yes. But note that it is using a row hammer attack to physically flip the bit in the shared memory. Doing so bypasses the normal copy-on-write shared memory safeguard. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_hammer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_hammer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >We have registered all possible domains that are one bit flip away from ubuntu.com and debian.org. We would like to hand these domains over to the correct authority. Please get in touch if you think you are one.

Aha! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ8s1JwtNas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ8s1JwtNas) is a talk about "bitsquatting" along the same lines. I'm sure I've seen a newer talk about it too

Edit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPbyDSvGasw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPbyDSvGasw) is the other video, which also looks at the behaviour of various clients

<comment><USER5> Yep. Artem's web page has more information as well:

[http://dinaburg.org/bitsquatting.html](http://dinaburg.org/bitsquatting.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know how step #1 works in practice? How can you detect which addresses correspond to same cells in neighboring rows?

<comment><USER7> Using something like [https://github.com/google/rowhammer- test](https://github.com/google/rowhammer-test)

tl;dr: You check. Allocate some memory and hammer it. If you detect flips, step 1 is complete.</comment></comment>


The Pentagon's $399 Billion Plane to Nowhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/07/08/pentagons_399_billion_plane_nowhere?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email <comment><USER2> It would appear this nation's military is a fat, bloated welfare recipient, feeling entitled and too powerful for anyone to do anything about it, impoverishing the nation.

We all know it has many brilliant and capable individuals and teams in it who can do great work, but the _system_ is anything but.

The money ultimately goes to people, meaning we are paying people to do unproductive work, though I'm sure plenty of it goes to executives extracting rents without working productively. Weapons are not the only way to make a nation secure. Collaborative relations with other countries and less disparity of wealth help too. Imagine the security that money could create if used to help others instead of threaten them, or invested into entrepreneurship or helping keep the government accountable.

History shows what happens to cultures where the people can't rein in its powerful who look for more power. I hope we figure out how to.

<comment><USER3> All the money we spend on the fighting the wars, yet we can't over spend on treating the veterans. It's really pathetic.

<comment><USER4> Veterans, yes. But how about all the people who lost their jobs in the US over the last 20 years because of the obvious incompetence of the government to budget in any way that makes sense.

Priorities. If you have a ton of starving and jobless people in your country, you do not spend a quarter of a TRILLION dollars on killing more people. I'm sorry, you just don't.

<comment><USER5> Actually government jobs programs kind of directly affect joblessness and hunger. The question is whether this is the right kind of jobs program. Fixing infrastructure would create more jobs with a greater multiplier (construction workers are lower paid and spend more of their income) and produce lasting value.

Edit: weird typo.

<comment><USER6> You are exactly right.

These huge military projects (which for the most part are utterly unnecessary) are nothing more than jobs programs cloaked as national security. There is certainly a huge element of rent extraction by defense contractor executives, as well as small business owners who utilize specialized direct award "set asides" designed for minorities, women, service disabled veterans (the vast majority of these are people who were never in combat, and have minor injuries at best such as back-pain), etc. Of course, the large defense contractors simply sub-contract to these small businesses and then do all the work, while the 3 people who constitute the small business pocket money for doing nothing other than existing.

But beyond the rent-extraction, you have a nation with a hugely oversized, overstaffed military. We take people, the vast majority of whom have an average high school record and zero college experience, and then put them into an immensely bloated, 1950's era organization. A small percentage of them will learn how to perform combat operations. The majority of them will learn to perform the logistics functions (supply, maintenance, repair, administration) that are the backbone of any military.

While some of these skills learned (electronics, software, etc) are in demand in the private sector, the vast, vast majority are not. In fact, a huge percentage of the administrative functions in the military have long been automated in the private sector. It is a truly overstaffed, bloated beyond belief organization.

So where do you go when you get out of active duty? If you are like many folks, you are truly fed up with being in a large government institution, and you want nothing more to do with the military. You go to school, aggressively learn some trade/skill that is in demand in the private sector, and you leave it.

The majority of people I've encountered don't do this. Instead, they take the only jobs they are qualified for: "quals" (somebody with military experience in some obscure area of logistics for an organization that is required on paper for a contractor to have employed upon award of a contract) for a defense contractor, or a civil service civilian job in the Department of Defense or other segments of the Federal gov't.

Both are, to some degree, do nothing jobs. A "Qual" might provide lots of advice to a defense contractor they are employed by, but typically they are just there because the contract demands that they are. They are mostly figure- heads. The joke in the industry is that many are hired and hang out in darkened offices playing video games, separated from the software developers and managers who were never in the military.

The civil service jobs in the Federal gov't are like working in any large bureaucracy. Mediocrity isn't just tolerated, but is the norm. People come in at 9 and leave at 3. If you care about your job, you work hard and end up carrying the weight of several of your coworkers who do nothing but watch the clock. Promotions are based on paper qualifications and certifications, are decided by people who have never met you, and are frequently awarded to people who dedicated their time to gaming the paper system instead of performing their job function.

What I am saying sounds anecdotal, but organizational experts who have studied failures at places such as the V.A. have all summed these findings up in a scientific way.

In Arlington, VA, there is a neighborhood called Crystal City. In Crystal City, there is a large, brand-new environmentally sustainable building which houses a huge number of EPA employees. The EPA has a valuable, important mission. For someone like me, it is beyond depressing seeing the employees milling about on 2 hour lunch breaks. The vast majority of them drive to work, despite the building being walking distance from a subway station. There is a mass exodus at 3PM as they all leave for suburbia.

Just like the rest of the Federal gov't, the EPA and the DOD are nothing more than giant employment programs. The difference is that the EPA gets its budget hammered by one political party that hates it, while the DOD is universally praised and worshipped by people who don't understand that the percentage of members who will ever see combat is in the single digits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _" An upfront question with any program now is: How many congressional > districts is it in?" said Thomas Christie, a former senior Pentagon > acquisitions official._

The military-industrial complex runs deep...and it goes to show how little we can rely on politicians to confront it. If you were a Representative from the few regions that still has an industrial base, it would be easy to justify just another "Yes" vote, for something that brings 50-500 well-paying jobs and is ostensibly there to "help America"...and hard to justify why you were one of the few to say "No" when ultimately, your share of the pork is small. But spread that attitude across dozens of representatives...and then you have a pork train that's too hard to stop, even if it is subpar in meeting its objectives. Maybe most projects are like this, it's just that this one kept going for a few hundred billion too far.

<comment><USER8> The problem with this type of spending, whether or not it does create jobs, is that it is inherently wasteful. If it were a good plane, and not a political show pony, I'd let it off the hook. But billions are being poured into this fancy paperweight, when that money could more readily benefit programs like NASA (I am a fan of private space enterprise, but if we are going to go nuts with the political budget, might as well be on things that are useful). This type of spending creates a false economy that is not a meritocracy but (for lack of better words) a porkocracy.

<comment><USER9> It's true, but the same people voting yes "because jobs" vote no on infrastructure repair and improvement projects - desperately needed work that would also create jobs and have a huge, noticeable positive impact on the general citizenry.

Govn't spending to create jobs is always welfare, no matter where we put the money. Why not put it somewhere that will create the same number of jobs, and have something other than a flaming war plane to show for it?

<comment><USER10> New defense projects are sexy; bringing this type of work to a district makes politicians seem "innovative", and it's the type of thing that plays well in a campaign speech. Maintaining and expanding infrastructure isn't sexy. It won't keep politicians elected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pierre Sprey (F-16's designer) on the F-35 "The F-35 was born of an exceptionally dumb piece of airforce PR spin" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw)

<comment><USER12> Good interview. Problems he's mentioning is basically true for any complex engineering problem: \- stakeholders with different agendas building a common product does not work well \- one size does not fit all

Same is true for software, etc.

<comment><USER13> Also known as "design by committee".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ...

$399 billion could virtually end hunger in America.

...

Or, you know, we could kill more innocent people halfway across the world. Yeah, let's do that.

America!!!

<comment><USER14> This isn't Reddit. I don't come to HK to read memes or "jokes." Please contribute something more substantive.

You could have made your point about hunger and priorities without it turning into an "America!!!" gag. Then maybe someone else would have replied and the conversation would have moved forward.

<comment><USER4> I'm not going to apologize for my use of a little bit of internet-flavoured comedy to make light of an otherwise absolutely horrifying situation.

As a dual US/CDN citizen myself, I really have to look at this and say 'Whoa. A country that I have pledged my allegiance to is, even as I type this, actively choosing to spend money on killing people outside of their country as well as it's own citizens, instead of helping the people inside of it's own country that are unfortunate bi-products of it's government and banking system's poor decision making over the last century.'

I work in theatre as well as software development, and in theatre we have two faces, a laughing face and a crying face. Because everything is a tragedy or a comedy, depending on how you look at it. I'm just choosing to use the smiley face. :O)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Previous F-35 stories on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7989659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7989659)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7906501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7906501)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7111843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7111843)

</comment><comment><USER16> $399B is enough to have funded NASA from 1980-2012.

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Annual_budget.2C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#Annual_budget.2C_1958-2012)

<comment><USER17> To be fair, almost a half of that NASA budget was used to pay for the Space Shuttle, that was a plane with many technical problems that use suppliers from almost the 50 states to gain political support in the congress.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Budget](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Budget)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We're just lucky that this sort of boondoggle only happens in the military. Imagine how much trouble we'd be in if the rest of our government were engaged in this kind of corruption and/or ineptitude!

<comment><USER19> It happens in most institutions of size where the goal is to control as many people as possible and the incentive is to create even more layers because then you've got "more people underneath you".

GM had/has an amazing number of levels of mismanagement.

Go after multiple solutions. Sure, cut spending, eliminate bureaucracy, but improve the process of improvement as well: Figure out how to make government changes on a smaller and more agile level. Figure out how to make flatten the legal landscape and make it more accessible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I recently called my senators and congressman about this issue. None of the staffers were able to provide me with their public opinions on the project. Two mentioned that they haven't received any calls on the matter. If you care about this issue, and are a US citizen, call ([http://www.contactingthecongress.org/](http://www.contactingthecongress.org/)) your elected officials.

<comment><USER6> This is by design. Lockheed first learned how to game congress with the B1B (another useless plane).

Here's the recipe:

Talk to the military, see what's giving them a hard-on these days. Get them to start coming up with a project to put on contract.

Military issues Request for Information/Request for Proposal based on requirements you told them to use

Contact any and all congressman. Let them know that you intend to make widget X for Aircraft Z in their respective District. Ensure that virtually every congressional district in the country contains a business that is making at least one or two parts for the aircraft.

A new general comes in who is honest, realizes the weapons system is useless, wants to can it. Congress says no, we need it. Who wants to be the guy who threw away jobs in his district?

Critical general leaves, is replaced by politically minded General who wants to be in charge of a "successful" program, drinks the kook-aid and pretends its not a giant boondoggle.

Profit.

<comment><USER21> >Lockheed first learned how to game congress with the B1B (another useless plane).

Well, except that the B1B was manufactured by Rockwell who have since been absorbed by Boeing.

<comment><USER6> ah, I stand corrected. What I should've said was the defense contracting industry learned how to game congress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems like I remember (back in 2005-6) taht the JSF/F-35 was well within budget and on time BEFORE the F-22 was cancelled because of the explosion in costs that now confronts the F-35. Can anyone corroborate that or am I totally off? It really seems that once the F-22 was cancelled the F-35 became the new 'cash cow' so to speak.

<comment><USER5> The irony of the F22 being cancelled in favor of the F35 is pretty rich.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Do they say $399 Billion because it looks cheaper than $400 Billion? ;-)

<comment><USER24> They're worried that if they charged $400bil and the government paid with a 400 billion dollar bill, someone could just pocket it. This way, they'd have to make change for $1 billion from the till.

<comment><USER25> I think it's so the people will say "Oh well, at least it's not $400 million.", and go on with their day. But, it could be your theory too, or may both! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> FWIW defense spending during the WWII and the Cold War did wonders to spur technical innovation. Silicon Valley in fact was a product of WWII defense activities ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley)).

While I don't necessarily agree with the end product and how it will be used, I say defense spending like this is ultimately good for the tech sector. It's funding innovation that wouldn't otherwise get funded and creates lots of attractive jobs in technology that will hopefully bring more people to the field.

We may not have even had the microwave oven today if it wasn't for defense spending on radar technology ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Discovery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Discovery)).

</comment><comment><USER27> War, the military industrial complex, and homeland security are our biggest money black holes our tax dollars go into and not things like food stamps. People need to start to get clued in...

I would like to make sure Lockheed Martin gets mentioned as the incompetent manufacturer in this debacle.

<comment><USER28> I believe you are wrong about that. While defense spending is big, it's not the highest. Health and Human Services and Social Security are both significantly higher portions of the budget. Unless there's a bunch of "off the books" spending?

You can easily see here in this extremely user-friendly document [http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2014/assets/budget.pdf) :-p

<comment><USER29> Food stamps =! social security. Also SS isn't an entitlement, I fucking paid into it, i should get something back.

<comment><USER27> No one said food stamps = social security but they both are social programs that benefit people.

Social Security is in fact an entitlement as in workers are "entitled" to their benefits by paying into the system. Republicans later smeared the word entitlement because it now also refers to welfare programs (entitled by law) so people get confused.

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

<comment><USER29> Yes but comparing to the military is unfair. These are two very different types of programs. Of course SS costs more, we're all paying massive amounts into it for our retirement.

Military on the other hand is spending congress controls and whether its 1 dollar or 1 trillion is by their whim. No one is explicitly paying into it. In these kinds of military vs "welfare" spending, removing SS from it makes perfect sense. It pays for itself, and then some (when congress isnt stealing from it). Military is all debts and spent money. Its doesn't pay for itself. It buys 1 trillion dollar jet programs that are the laughingstock of the world as our corruption and incompetence are clear to see.

<comment><USER27> I think you are confusing me with wuliwong...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> After reading the Wikipedia page on this plane, you'd have to be crazy to buy it: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II)

Note: it's a long article

</comment><comment><USER31> It seems to be expensive, but what would have been the alternative to JSF or to the F-35?

The trillion dollar budget was postulated by some already long beforehand. Bill Sweetman wrote that into his book ten years ago already: [http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Fighter-Lockheed-Martin- Strik...](http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Fighter-Lockheed-Martin- Strike/dp/0760317925) Unfortunately, with this being what it is, nobody believes the companies' presented combat aircraft prices. Just a while ago, the French Dassault Rafale doubled in price, some time after winning a huge fighter order competition in India, and it's a plane that's been operational already for fourteen years!: [http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-dna- exclusive-100-price...](http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-dna- exclusive-100-price-escalation-on-rafale-fighter-aircraft-to-rs-175-lakh- crore-likely-to-dent-iaf-s-strike-capability-1957107)

Maybe two or three different aircraft could have been developed, and it would have been faster and cheaper in total - since each design could have been more straightforward, more specialized for its mission. Who knows? This is far from obvious to me. Pierre Sprey advocated this line. But even his favorite optimized light weight fighters were adapted to multiple roles and replaced many more specialized aircraft.

Another alternative would have been to develop nothing really new, just keep operating old airframes, maybe manufacture some minor updates (F-15, F-16 and Super Hornet are being manufactured). They don't have stealth, though some versions have some minor stealthiness. Russia and China are developing at least reasonably stealthy aircraft (PAK-FA, J-20, J-31). The F-22 is not manufactured but AFAIK the tooling is preserved. But it's a more specialized aircraft anyway. I think doing nothing would not have been a politically possible path.

Everybody complains but there aren't that many better directions. Some countries could at least buy European or Russian generation 4.5 fighters if they want to avoid JSF, but that's mostly it.

<comment><USER21> The problem isn't just that the F-35 is multirole but is trying to cater to the various quirks of multiple services. I mentioned it upthread, but an example of this is the very shape of the aircraft was determined in large part due to the Marines' vertical take off requirement. This necessitated a huge lifting fan in the fuselage, which had major ramifications on the maneuverability of the aircraft and the pilot's visibility out of the cockpit. Then there are all the modifications made to the C variant to accommodate carrier landings for the Navy.

The end result is that you have an airframe that was meant to save money by being common between all three services which has ended up with a parts commonality of only 25-30%[1] and whose performance has suffered because of the requisite compromises made to chase that goal.

I think one of the other big things that gets lost in these conversations is that the F-35 was meant to be cheap and widely fielded. The problem is that the program's bloating to the point that they're getting too expensive to field in numbers that would replace the existing force.

The response is usually that the high tech gadgetry in these planes will save the day. That's problematic. This is going back to the F-22, but RAND ran a widely-circulated simulated conflict in the Straight of Taiwan a few years back[2]. The result was that the F-22s held their own... until they ran out of missiles and were overwhelmed by the sheer number of opposition planes that were being thrown at them.

So, basically, my answer to your question would be forget the super planes and focus on cheaper, more, and good enough. Accept that fighter, bomb truck, _and_ stealth is a pick two proposition. Design something light, cheap, and modernized to fill the multirole capability of the F-16 today; it's very difficult to replace a $40M jet in the same kind of numbers with a $150M one. Supplement the F-22 with new production F-15SEs. Look into things like the Textron AirLand Scorpion to fill the permissive environment CAS role that the A-10C fills today.

KISS.

[1] [http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/lightning- rod-f-35-fight...](http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/lightning- rod-f-35-fighter-family-capabilities-and-controversies-021922/)

[2] [http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2009/RA...](http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG888.pdf)

<comment><USER31> I don't dispute your points: it is very expensive and there are problems.

So, at the risk of oversimplifying, your preferred approach would be to stop the F-35 program (or programs) and start a few new different aircraft programs, and trying to depend on existing or mild developments as well?

It would not be cheap either, and it would take time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Obama runs the Whitehouse and has for 6 years, so is he responsible? It didn't take him long after signing on to fire the NASA administrator.

<comment><USER14> Obama is definitely partly responsible.

This isn't a party political issue anyway, both the Democrats AND Republicans support this program and have for quite a while. As the article says contractors exist in 45 states, so that's 45 senators who have a vested interest in its future.

This 10,000 pound gorilla has been around for quite a few years before Obama and while it would have been political suicide to try and kill it, it would be interesting to see if Obama could have killed it (since he is in command of the military, but congress actually makes a lot of the acquisition decisions).

I'm sure Obama could have ordered the US military to not buy the F-35 anymore but then what? The contracts still exist and the military's budget is based around those purchases (i.e. the money likely cannot be used for alternatives without approval).

<comment><USER33> You mean 90 senators (out of 100)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> oh yeah, all military spending is just soooo stupid ... say people writing comments on something originally funded by the very same military-industrial complex, living in an area largely funded through said complex after ww2.

but we like drones and robots, right? boston dynamics, the darpa challenge, ... oh what a WASTE.

and the technology invented and developed for this plane will appear nowhere else, ever. that's how tech innovation works, all dead ends.

</comment><comment><USER35> I would not be surprised if this cash cow gets cancelled after this recent grounding. This scheme is hardly going unnoticed.

</comment><comment><USER36> Eh. You get what you vote for.

</comment><comment><USER37> Did anyone else get overloaded by the foreignpolicy.com design? Yikes!</comment>


Trello Ends the First Wave of SaaS - <AUTHOR> http://laktek.com/2017/01/11/end-of-the-first-wave-of-saas <comment><USER2> From the OP:

 _> Consumer focused SaaS had its hay days[sic]. But going forward it won't be a rosy path. We will rarely see a unicorn. The first wave of SaaS is fading._

Hmm. I don't really buy all of this.

 _> Consumer focused SaaS had its hay days[sic]._

Even if the boom is over (and as busts go, this one wasn't too bad), I don't think this is at all true. There are plenty of consumer-facing services yet to be invented (or reinvented).

 _> But going forward it won't be a rosy path._

When has it ever been _rosy_ , unless you somehow managed to accidentally time the market? In bad times valuations are low and money is scarce, in good times valuations are high (so you will almost certainly have future down rounds) and attention is scarce.

 _> We will rarely see a unicorn._

Argh... You can count existing unicorns off the cuff without running out of fingers. Unicorns are rare _no matter what_.

 _> The first wave of SaaS is fading._

Well, OK. But waves come and go without categories going away. Arguably the very _first_ wave is long gone. Flickr faded after the Yahoo acquisition. Instagram came along and is still growing like gangbusters after being acquired. More photo-centric consumer services will inevitably come along, and so will new services for staying in touch, making plans, sharing moments, doodling, making music, organizing a movement, transferring money, asking questions, finding a job...

In my not-so-humble opinion, consumerization has only just started, and you ain't seen nothin' yet.</comment>


The Snails of War - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/science/the-snails-of-war-and-other-robotics-experiments.html

<comment><USER2> This seems a tiny bit inhumane...

<comment><USER3> Hellish if you imagine yourself as one of the animals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me, or has the article a polemic undertone?</comment>


DOM elements with ID's are global variables - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/buntine/dom-elements-with-ids-are-global-variables <comment><USER2> Your point is valid that giving your html tags id's are like defining global objects.

In fact some browsers give you warnings if you have two tags with the same id defined.

However this is by no means a new 'feature'. Maybe it's time to take a brush up on the DOM model.

Oh. And yes. The web technologies are a whole pile of worms in itself. Just think of the hacks that Javascript frameworks go through in order to render things just somewhat fast.</comment>


Cambridge (UK) Startup Weekend, 11–13th March - <AUTHOR> http://cambridge.startupweekend.org/

<comment><USER2> If you're new to the startup scene and you looking to make some connections with like minded people there is no better place then a Startup Weekend event.

About a year ago I went to the one in Boston and made some amazing connections that opened all sorts of doors. Trust me, there is no better way to really make connections with people (especially startup types) then spending 54-hours in the same room trying to build a company.

It's also the only place I know of where an absolutely nobody can pitch an idea on Friday night and take first place on Sunday. And when it happens to you, like it did to me, it will really open your eyes to just what you're capable of. Its just an amazing feeling.

So go already!

<comment><USER3> What about for people who don't have a specific idea (or none small enough to reasonably start on in 54 hours) but want to hang out and help on someone else's idea?

<comment><USER4> They're cool with that too, at least that's what the FAQ says. You just aren't allowed to hang around without taking part, I gather.

I just booked a ticket after seeing the article here, and I'm pretty excited. Even if my idea doesn't win any votes, It'll be a fun challenge for the weekend at least and just possibly a big opportunity.

Also, reading around I found a discount code for the event here: [http://www.cabume.co.uk/the-cluster/inaugural-cambridge- star...](http://www.cabume.co.uk/the-cluster/inaugural-cambridge-startup- weekend-launches-with-new-startup-fund.html)

<comment><USER5> Could not have said it better myself :-)

We want to get people along to try out their ideas, and also who just want to collaborate on great projects! Great startups are born of great teams of people, who are much more important than any one idea.

Today we have also announced special prizes for Wireless and Healthcare projects, as well as our overall prize for best project.

To find out more, look here - <http://cambridge.startupweekend.org>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is on over the first weekend of the Cambridge Science Festival - lots to see and do: <http://comms.group.cam.ac.uk/sciencefestival/whats-on/></comment>


What To Do When A Tech Giant Decides To Eat Your Lunch - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/13/tech-giant-eats-your-lunch/ <comment><USER2> There will always be giants ahead of you. And they will always try to eat your lunch. But with vision, determination and perseverance, the giants can be outfoxed and outwitted. One of my favorite ideas in business is that if you think you have 'no competition' than you don't know your market well enough. There is always competition. Forward competition, backwards competition, and neighboring competition. The key is to be able to think and visualize the best solution, and if that solution is better than anything else that's offered out there, and you can execute on it, then you are safe. Once that vision is lost, then the companies/products become walking dead, just waiting for the next competitor to catch up and pass them.

Even the mighty fall regularly.

[http://www.walletpop.com/photos/top-25-biggest-product- flops...](http://www.walletpop.com/photos/top-25-biggest-product-flops-of-all- time/)

[http://consumerist.com/2008/09/the-10-biggest- chapter-11-ban...](http://consumerist.com/2008/09/the-10-biggest- chapter-11-bankruptcies-in-us-history.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not mentioned in the article: sell your company to a competitor of the giant who's just realized one of their competitors has entered a new market place, and wants a way to catch up quickly...</comment>


Ask HN: Can you legally deny selling software to someone on ethical grounds? - <AUTHOR> Our company sells software as a service that helps people organize events.
We have been growing quickly over the past couple of years and have recently run into an ethical question: should we (and can we legally) decline to sell our software to organizations that we think are morally wrong?
For example, there are several people on our team that are extremely pro-choice. We had a pro-life group sign up recently and these employees are threatening to quit if we accept their money.
Is it even legal to refuse their business (it could be considered religious discrimination).
I think we're all in agreement that if the KKK signed up and wanted to use our software to organize clan rallies we would not be willing to foster hate speech.
The question has also been raised of if we deny this client where we would draw the line in the future. If a certain politician wanted to use it to organize rallies in the next election would that be Ok even if we vehemently opposed their political beliefs?
How have other software companies dealt with this in the past? <comment><USER4> > _For example, there are several people on our team that are extremely pro- > choice. We had a pro-life group sign up recently and these employees are > threatening to quit if we accept their money._

kernel.org and gnu.org will gladly give those pro-life people an OS, mozilla.org a browser. Free of charge, and all.

microsoft.com will lavish software upon those pro-lifers, much of it for a fee.

Safeway will sell a loaf of bread and bottle of milk to a pro-lifer.

But some primadonnas don't want their employing software organization to sell them event organizing software?

They really are in the wrong business. Because if you make software for event organizing, half the customers will be groups that half of you don't agree with. That's because events are often political or religious or whatever.

You're not going to have much of an income from organizing bake sale fund raisers for school trips or baby showers --- and what if some on your team are against even that sort of thing?

Let them go and replace them with "pro-money" and "pro-business" team members.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. And the reality is if you don't take their money, a competitor will.

<comment><USER4> I don't agree with "if I don't perpetrate this harm, someone else will, so it's okay" because that pattern can be used to justify any harm. If I don't perpetrate this harm, and someone else does, the moral culpability rests with them and not me; and that makes all the difference.

I'm saying that doing business with people who oppose abortion isn't the perpetration of harm. We as a society do not economically ostracize people who hold a pro-life position. There is no need for some random software developers of some groupware to be doing that.

<comment><USER6> We don't? Sure we do. We boycott all sorts of things. Economics and market relationships are one of the most potent tools people in our capitalist society have for effecting change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's next? Are you going to investigate your clients, their families, their gender, their money sources? Are you going to open a money laundering investigation on each bank deposit you get?

Unless it is illegal, you should not care. I think it is very unprofessional to deny service to someone because he has extreme opinions. You become just as worse as him; if not more.

It is not your right to dictate what society should do. If the government allowed them to organize the event, let them roll. Remember, if you are pro- choice, you should help get the opinion of everyone be heard.

<comment><USER6> I imagine what's next is that the next time a pro-life advocacy organization tries to sign up, they will again say "no".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Your company should have legal counsel who can answer questions like this.

Religious discrimination applies to individuals in hiring or school admissions situations. Companies can generally reserve the right to not do business with a customer for any reason, but various legal precedents might apply, so it depends.

</comment><comment><USER6> We've turned down clients for ethical reasons before. It's not that weird. People do it all the time; they just don't make a lot of noise about it. If the Aryan Nation tried to sign up with us, we'd probably tweet a bit about it. But otherwise we'd just declare ourselves incompatible and get on with our lives and let whoever they are get on with theirs.

So, the assessment you need to make is:

a. How important to your company is the bloc of employees with this client conflict?

b. How much of a dealbreaker to that bloc is the conflict?

c. How much of a dealbreaker to your company is the other side of the conflict?

Pro-choice/pro-life isn't my particular red line (I was raised and still sort of consider myself Catholic, though I'm not pro-life --- but there are certainly pro-life organizations I'd refuse to work with). But there are other red lines, and they do come up, and your principles are usually more important than your customer pipeline, and it's usually just not a big deal to say "no" to people.

Ask your lawyer --- not a message board! --- about the legality of refusing to work with pro-life advocacy organizations, but I'd happily bet money that you're just fine on this. The bigger issue is how you want to handle your relationship with your team.

You might come up with a compromise, if you don't want to publicly take a stand that will attract attention that could harm the company (and that is a possibility); you could, for instance, make a countervailing donation (at some multiple of revenue) to NARAL.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think it's one of the reasons boiler-plate terms-of-service documents have so many restrictions how you may use a service. For example my ISP doesn't allow me to post any hate speech related content while using their internet service. Unlikely to impossible they check all users, but gives them the loophole to deny service to anybody indidually, possibly using a small unrelated technicality as stated reason, should they find out.

Random ShowHN of a website that's not even a month old [https://exifshot.com/terms](https://exifshot.com/terms) "We have the right (though not the obligation) to, in Our sole discretion (i) [...] or (ii) terminate or deny access to and use of the Website to any individual or entity for any reason, in Our sole discretion. We will have no obligation to provide a refund of any amounts previously paid."

Our SaaS discussed the same. We had political parties we didn't agree with, government agencies we didn't agree with (spying, tracking), even individuals. So far none made it past the trial period, they effectively never really used our service. We would deny service, we're small (and pride?) enough to stand for our ideals.

I agree with your assessment you might get sued when it comes to religious discrimination.

<comment><USER10> On your point about using loopholes to deny service. I'm writing this under a more anonymous account too because apparently what I'm about to say is a radical idea and people don't usually get it.

I was charged for a crime once! I spent a month in jail! Me! I did. Yeah. They never managed to directly accuse me of anything and in the end I took a plea bargain to get out of jail (they had already locked me in jail for a month for literally nothing, I would put nothing past them). The most valuable lesson I learned from this is that we are all already guilty of something according to the way the law is written. They only call that in when they need to get you. But be under no delusions that you are not already got. Constitutional justice is pure fantasy in the United States.

If "the bad guys" write rules that make everyone already guilty I have to wonder at what point "the good guys" become guilty themselves. I'm saying the "it's not my responsibility" excuse doesn't cut it anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Everyone telling you to fire half your team has the luxury of never having to look that employee in the eye and telling them you're letting them go because the customer is always right and the employee never is.

Unless your product is so well-built and scalable that it could withstand the next 3 months without any dev support whatsoever, it wouldn't surprise me if firing half your workforce would be tantamount to shutting your doors over this. Plus, it's not like the remaining half will be inspired to work twice as hard, and it's not like "as long as I'm getting paid" devs are beating down the door to replace the ones threatening to leave at half the price. Recruiting talent is really hard, even when you're popular. Most of this board doesn't get or appreciate that.

Here's what I'd do. Unlike that guy who declined to make a wedding cake, I'd say, ok guys, but I make wedding cakes my own way, and I don't customize, so the top piece will be very traditional, and if that doesn't match with your special day, that's not my problem and you're free to take your business elsewhere.

Announce to your employees that you're going to do something similar for the pro-life group. Maybe in the sales calls, say you're going to watermark "right to choose" on printouts or something, and that's an area you won't customize. That oughtta shut up the malcontents and perhaps inspire them to work cheaper for you.

And then when the would-be customer gets all butthurt about your horrible sales skills, no one will care, because you're still willing to provide your service to them, just not the way they want, which is not newsworthy.

</comment><comment><USER12> Let them quit. Your company will be better without such extreme zealots

<comment><USER6> Or it won't, and you'll fail, but at least you'll have stood by your own principle of disregarding the political beliefs of your team in the service of your customers, and maybe that's what'll make you happiest!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most people start by assuming you can trade with anyone willing to trade with you. Without more, you're not responsible for their use or misuse of the purchase.

I have a hard time seeing SaaS services operating to make your team complicit in the activities of the purchaser. The "aS" in SaaS doesn't usually require you to do something that can be mistaken for endorsement.

As others have said, these are principles that can end up costing your team lots of money. You all might agree to be a business that helps pro-choice people organize. But it's tiring to be a place that just deals with those of untainted virtue. If you all agree it's that kind of place, fine, but puritanism doesn't scale outside of the small social class that shares your convictions.

You probably want to talk to a lawyer in your place about specifics. I think California does prohibit some political affiliation discrimination, so you might have to sell to Rs and Ds, in that example. And if you think something might be religious discrimination, that's a gut feeling I wouldn't ignore without legal advice.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Is it even legal to refuse their business (it could be considered religious > discrimination).

Didn't the supreme court rule for the baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple?

<comment><USER15> Kinda. What SCOTUS actually ruled is that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated the Free Exercise Clause, and so essentially threw the case out. The opinion very clearly states that this exception to the anti-discrimination laws are not going to set precedent for future exceptions and that the bar in the future will be even higher due to various changes in the law from the time of the incident.

One article I quickly dug up that seems to give it a fair treatment: [https://qz.com/1296174/scotus-masterpiece-bakery-case-the- su...](https://qz.com/1296174/scotus-masterpiece-bakery-case-the-supreme- courts-ruling-still-defends-gay-rights/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm getting older and somewhat dismayed at how people want to punish others for their viewpoint. I am told I must be more tolerant by people who want to sack, ban and punish others for having a different point of view.

I would not support your colleagues stance unless your clients are breaking the law. The logical outcome of supporting every interest group would be chaos.

</comment><comment><USER17> I can't offer much advice, except this: you should treat the two questions separately:

1\. Who do you _want_ to deny business to. 2\. Who you _can_ , legally, deny business to.

A lawyer can answer #2, but only yourselves can answer #1. Be careful, as too much internal debate may split the company along ideological lines - <USER2> searching for where to draw the line, you're likely to run into issues on which you (strongly) disagree (reminds me of [http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by- controversial/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/) ).

It might be best if the boss draws a line somewhere that won't make too many people angry (and reserves the right to decide any gray areas on a case by case basis), and quickly ends the discussion. Anything else is, in my opinion, asking for an ideological war.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here in America, I believe you can refuse them, as l long as they aren't a protected class. But should you?absolutely not. Even if they were the kkk. You are talking about Free Speech. And while that is between us and government, I believe Free Speech is the cornerstone to democracy, and each and everyone of us should strive to support Free Speech. Even if that means supporting speech we don't like. You may not agree with what someone is saying, but you sound right for their right to say it. In this day people seem to be fighting against the right of free speech, especially speech they don't like.

<comment><USER19> You better believe I fight against speech I don't like. Look up the paradox of tolerance to see where your argument falls apart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you give in on this, what next will they ask? They are trying to partially take control of the business by making threats. That is never acceptable. Fire them for cause, or at least make them quit. (financially better if they quit, but they might illegally cause harm unless you escort them out immediately)

Also, you don't discriminate if you are serious about running a business. You accept all legal business that is profitable.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> (Sorry for the throwaway account; my normal HN account is tied to my identity and I don't want this linked to my employer.)

<comment><USER9> No problem, makes sense.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) "Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information"

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unless you are a federally and state utilities commission regulated utility service like an electrical grid operator, natural gas last-mile operator, or dialtone POTS phone service, you are not obligated to accept any particular customer.

</comment><comment><USER22> It is not religious discrimination at all, and political discrimination is not illegal, so there isn't a legal issue with any of the scenarios you mentioned.

<comment><USER23> That's wrong. Political discrimination is illegal in certain states like California.

If someone's views on abortion are strongly dictated by their religious beliefs then I think it could be argued that it is religious discrimination. At the very least I could see it going to trial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would keep politics out of your business.

You'll offend 50% of your potential client base and 50% of your employees (potentially) if you bring politics in to the picture.

I wouldn't allow employees to dictate business decisions like that, and would look at quietly letting go the ones who are threatening to quit.

Also look at what information your employees have access to, I would minimize discussions and employee access to who your signups are and minimize their access to how they are using the app. Make client privacy a priority.

37signals cat.jpg story: [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3078-trust-is- fragile](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3078-trust-is-fragile)

And security as well. Make sure employees with access to the database are trustworthy and aren't going to take extreme measures against clients they don't agree with.

Avoiding groups that are promoting hate and criminal activities is understandable.

Now is a good time to improve your ToS to outline reasons why you might suspend or terminate a users account.

And would definitely consult an attorney as to how to go about informing clients you don't want their business if you decide to go that route.

Good luck, congrats on the growth, update us how this shakes out.

<comment><USER25> I agree. Keep politics out of your business. Doing otherwise is a potential hornet's nest. If they are doing illegal business then sure, deny service on those grounds and possibly report to authorities, if applicable.

In politics you're not going to please everyone, even those on your side, they'll potentially ask for more "activism". So, if it were me, I'd keep politics and business sepatate.

<comment><USER26> Unfortunately you don't always have the choice of keeping politics out. Activists that discover you are doing business with a company or group they disapprove of can publicize this fact, organize boycotts against you, harass your other customers, bully your employees and do everything in their power to make you go out of business if you don't cut ties with the customer which they disapprove.

<comment><USER27> The best solution for that is to still keep politics out and ignore the complainers. They only have any power at all because companies and organisations listen to them. The more people ignore angry Twitter mobs, the quicker said Twitter mobs become ineffective and people realise screaming at anything that offends them won't get them their way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It could be quite bad for morale to keep their business. You'll probably have a group that quit, plus the ones that are left but still would be unsettled by you valuing a bit of $ over principles.

That said, I don't think the Supreme Court ruling covers your case (you don't have a religious objection), so you might want to get council.

</comment><comment><USER29> In what way do you think you have an obligation to provide the service? Don't business with don't like. But WTF KKK? details and we'll, um. help/

</comment><comment><USER30> Is the natural follow-up to this question: What about Google?

</comment><comment><USER31> > I think we're all in agreement that if the KKK signed up and wanted to use > our software to organize clan rallies we would not be willing to foster hate > speech.

I think you might actually have a problem with that one, too, unless you have a policy in place that defines hate speech and that it's not allowed on your platform. Even the KKK has freedom of speech, and there isn't an actual law about "hate speech,"[2] and the ACLU routinely goes to bat for the KKK and Nazis to protect their freedom of speech, as well as yours and mine, even though we might not agree with everyone's speech[1].

> The United States does not have hate speech laws, since American courts have > repeatedly ruled that laws criminalizing hate speech violate the guarantee > to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. > Constitution.[8] There are several categories of speech that are not > protected by the First Amendment, such as speech that calls for imminent > violence upon a person or group. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled > that hate speech is not one of these categories.[92][not in citation given] > Court rulings often must be reexamined to ensure the U.S. Constitution is > being upheld in the ruling on whether or not the words count as a > violation[2]

There were actually 2 cases about bakers refusing to sell their services to people based on sexual orientation, with 2 different outcomes because the reasons were different. In one case, they had a stated policy against derogatory language/images

> In the first case, the baker refused service to a customer who wanted her to > bake a cake with anti-gay Bible verses on it. The customer argued that he > was discriminated against because of his religious beliefs. But the court > ruled that this was not discrimination because the baker had a consistent > policy of refusing to create cakes that used derogatory language or > imagery.[3a]

> In the second case, a baker refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex > couple, saying that it violated his religious beliefs. The court held the > baker liable, saying that his reason was just a pretext for discriminating > against gays.[3b]

[1] [https://www.aclu.org/other/freedom-expression-aclu- position-...](https://www.aclu.org/other/freedom-expression-aclu-position- paper)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States)

[3] [https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-right-to-refuse- servi...](https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-right-to-refuse-service-can- a-business-refuse-service-to-someone-because-of-appearance)

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow, ok, there is so much misinformation in this thread...

Background: I specialize in partisan political tech consulting - <USER3> hired by start ups in the political tech space and VC's that are either evaluating a company in this market or have already invested and need a "subject matter expert" to make sure no one messes up too badly. This is a problem that I talk to firms and starts up about _a lot_ (like three+ times this week).

> Is it legal not accept their business/shut down their account? Yes. As long > as they are not a protected class AND the reason you are doing so is > outlined in your terms of service. Even if they are a protected class there > are some exceptions but leave that to your lawyers.

> By denying this group, are you locking out 50% of your market? Absolutely > not. While in theory saying "my company only sells to Democrats" could be a > bad idea if your product had market fit outside the political market, saying > "we do not sell to Republicans" will potentially _grow_ your market share in > politics. Political organizations frequently do not spend money with vendors > that also sell to their opponents.

If you are targeting the political market it is often important (if not required) to 'pick a side' at the beginning. There has never been a successful nonpartisan _politically focused_ tech company in the US, ever. NationBuilder for example has been a complete financial failure while other companies like Polis are nonpartisan but their primary market fit is nonpolitical.

> What about Microsoft, Firefox, Stripe, or Eventbrite? They will sell to > anyone! Yes and no. Stripe turned off service for the hate site Gab.com. > Additionally there is a major difference between a platform (Microsoft Word) > and a vital tool for winning in the political space (like a voterfile), > especially in the already fairly saturated US market - internationally it's > a little different, but that's really just because there are less options.

Are you a platform or a tool? Companies like Hustle have tried really hard to fall into that "platform" category but between their clients seeing them as a tool and saturation of their niche (p2p SMS services) they decided to not sell to Republicans. If they had not made this choice their Dem clients would have left.

> What should you do / how have other companies dealt with this? Assuming you > are not a strictly politically focused company (which I'm guessing you're > not, otherwise this would have come up earlier) the best thing to do is work > with your team to come up with a terms of service that reflects your values.

A good example of this is saying "we do not allow clients to use our tools to promote violence, hate speech, or fake news through this system." I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten on the phone with some client's lawyer and they want to know what we _actually_ define as hate speech, to which my response usually is "if you have to ask..."

Eventbrite serves both Dems and Republicans, they even have seperate staff to work with each party! That being said, NGP VAN only works with Dems and i360 only works with Republicans. Which one are you more similar to?

> Is it bad that your employees have opinions on how what they build should be > use? Happens to everyone and should be celebrated, not shut down. > [https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/28/18116447/google- > employee...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/28/18116447/google-employees- > project-dragonfly-chinese-search-engine-protest-letter-400-signatures) > [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/22/tim- > cook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/22/tim-cook-apple- > refusal-unlock-iphone-fbi-civil-liberties) > [https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/30/17179100/facebook-memo- > le...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/30/17179100/facebook-memo-leaks-boz- > andrew-bosworth)</comment>


Fortress of Tedium: What I Learned as a Substitute Teacher - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/magazine/fortress-of-tedium-what-i-learned-as-a-substitute-teacher.html?src=longreads&_r=0 <comment><USER2> By the way, one thing I have discovered (the hard way, mostly) in teaching as an adjunct is that there is no penalty for being boring but there can be a penalty for being interesting, at least for many values of "interesting." I wrote a post "How do you know when you're being insensitive? How do you know when you're funny?" ([https://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/22/how-do-you-know-when- your...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/22/how-do-you-know-when-youre-being- insensitive-how-do-you-know-when-youre-funny/)) that deals in part with these issues.

The tedium of the school system is real, but it is also in part a reaction to a simple nature fact: A single unhappy student (or parent) can cause a great deal of stress and a great number of problems for a given teacher or set of administrators. Consequently, the default of the individual teacher is towards material and processes that are inoffensive—and easy to grade on a pass-fail basis. The worry for many teachers and administrators is about the worst-case scenario.

I used to wonder why school is so boring and I used to promise myself that if I were in charge it'd be different. Now I know why.

</comment><comment><USER3> _...high school is wondrously efficient at making interesting things dull... "_

Ain't that the truth. I learned that not because I recognized it my day to day as a student, but because I had one or two teachers in high school that were absolutely exceptional (I was lucky, some kids encounter none) and the droning background noise of the rest of education became very stark in comparison.

It's impossible to teach hundreds of students a year and make everything fantastical the whole time (not to mention that some kids will never give one f*ck about US History or whatever their natural predilections dictate) but man oh man does the current Common Core driven, test-everything, no-rote-learning- except-test-all-rote-learning way of looking at education just crush students.

And you don't have to ask a student - most teachers today will bemoan the degree to which their hands are tied to properly educate and, more importantly, make learning fun, by bureaucracies run by educational theorists who have never spent a day in a classroom.

<comment><USER4> I can think of three high school classes that were great because of the teachers (an English class, a geometry class, and a shop class), and maybe three that were great because of their self-learning nature (my first programming class, an engineering class, and an after-school electronics+engineering class taught by the shop teacher).

For everything else, I've got to agree. Take my US History class. I think it's important to know the events that shaped our culture, know roughly the order they came in, and about when they happened and _why_. The name and date of a 19th century law involving share croppers? Sure, I'll be able to write an essay on it for the test, because I know that's the requirement, but ask me 6 months later, and I won't be able to tell you much about it.

<comment><USER5> "Sure, I'll be able to write an essay on it for the test, because I know that's the requirement, but ask me 6 months later, and I won't be able to tell you much about it."

Here's a secret: That's the point of the class. School is mainly there to teach you to take assignments, follow directions, and cough up results on demand, irrespective of whether you actually care about the subject. It's a much-in-demand business skill.

<comment><USER6> > Here's a secret: That's the point of the class. School is mainly there to > teach you to take assignments, follow directions, and cough up results on > demand, irrespective of whether you actually care about the subject. It's a > much-in-demand business skill.

I get tired of people dumping on schools.

The problem with school is that most of the consumers of said education are unmotivated slackers whom you practically have to beat the information into.

There are many reasons for people to not like school (social aspects--both personal and community--certainly being a big problem), but, I have _ZERO_ sympathy for anyone who complains that it was boring, uninteresting drudgery from an educational standpoint.

Yes, everybody has bumped into the teacher that is retired-in-place--these people exist in any long-lived institution including companies. But, dear God, most teachers are desperate for _any_ student to show even a modicum of interest in what they are teaching. Even in the worst schools, there always seems to be a handful of teachers lighting the way.

If you found your education boring, it's because you didn't exert even the minimum amount of effort necessary to get the attention of those teachers. And that's your own damn fault.

<comment><USER4> > The problem with school is that most of the consumers of said education are > unmotivated slackers whom you practically have to beat the information into.

So, we agree there's a problem. It's immaterial if the issue is in the school itself or in the students. The material fact is that the tool you're using (the current educational system) isn't having the effect that you want (imparting useful information and useful ways to think about it).

Say that I've got a polished, high-quality product, heavily advertised, easily available, and cheap. But: sales numbers are terrible. Is it the potential customers that are the problem, or is it something about the product? Put another way, is it more useful to fight against the nature of the customers, or to modify the product into something that will convince them to buy and use it?

If most people are unmotivated, I don't think it's reasonable or constructive to just say "all well, they should've just tried harder". I think it's more useful to assume that they aren't _inherently_ slackers and diagnose and fix the problems in the system to improve the experience for the students and the outcome for society, overall.

<comment><USER6> > It's immaterial if the issue is in the school itself or in the students.

Um, that is, in fact, kind of a _VERY_ big deal. If the problem is the students, your solutions are mostly about fixing things _outside_ the school.

> The material fact is that the tool you're using (the current educational > system) isn't having the effect that you want (imparting useful information > and useful ways to think about it).

I somewhat disagree with this. The system appears to be generating a certain average level of education. We would _like_ the system to be generating a higher average level of education. No one has yet shown that there is a better way of doing this than the current system, sadly, without expending a _lot_ more focused resource than people are politically willing to exert.

> I think it's more useful to assume that they aren't inherently slackers and > diagnose and fix the problems in the system to improve the experience for > the students and the outcome for society, overall.

The problem isn't that students don't want an education--the problem is that there is almost always something right _now_ (sports, guys/girls, video games, Facebook/Snapchat/Line) that they want _more_.

This is what a school is fighting against. Good luck.

<comment><USER7> > No one has yet shown that there is a better way of doing this than the > current system, sadly, without expending a lot more focused resource than > people are politically willing to exert.

John Holt wrote "how children fail" and "how children learn" at least 40 years ago. John Gatto wrote "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" 25 years ago.

The education problem is very well defined, but it can't be fixed or addressed because of inertia, and because of who benefits from the status quo.

<comment><USER6> > John Holt wrote "how children fail" and "how children learn" at least 40 > years ago. John Gatto wrote "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of > Compulsory Schooling" 25 years ago.

Holt is not a particularly good figure to cite to back up your assertions. "Education" books are like most "business" books, very little research and data to back up scores of anecdotes. This doesn't automatically make him wrong, but many of his ideas have been overturned and refuted by actual research and investigation.

However, your point stands and we are in agreement with the fact that there is no political will to expend the resource required to improve educational attainment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also, in a similar vein: SlateStarCodex Gives A Graduation Speech [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a- graduation-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation- speech/)

<comment><USER9> In the same vein, sure, but an order of magnitude more grim. And more beautiful. I'll recommend this article until the sun burns out. Or until the educational system gets its act together -- but I repeat myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My high school was an interesting experience. It was a poor area and they expected few of the students to go to further education - but rather than use that as an excuse to treat the students like losers, the school tried to include some of the spread of college and vocational-school classes. I ended up taking lessons on archery, welding, video editing, and Latin, among other things.

</comment><comment><USER11> The article was fun to read, deceptively informal. In fact the writing is brilliant. Almost every sentence has some delightful, unexpected word or phrase instead of cliche. It also relies heavily on sound. Even when you read silently, you hear the words. So alliteration, echo, rhyme, and rhythm are still important.

<comment><USER12> I thought the writing was boring. I had to skip around to get to the part where he hated schools. Then he didn't really make any conclusion anyway except "less structure, lol"

<comment><USER13> I'm with you: I found it rambling and unappealing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you liked the writing, check out the 1988 novel _The Mezzanine_ by the same author (Nicholson Baker). He's also written about Wikipedia ([https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia.internet)).

</comment><comment><USER15> During high school I became aware of community colleges and it actually occurred to me that all the homework and stress involved with maintaining a high GPA simply wasn't worth it. I took easy electives and barely passed everything else.

</comment><comment><USER16> Lovely read.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for research done with shallow CNNs and lo-res data - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I trained small networks on low res data.

What are you trying to do? What kind of research are you looking for?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've already built a working model (at least it appears that way). I'm looking for any research involving non-representational, low resolution imagery (3x3) - I haven't seen anything that rules out working with this kind of data at this scale. But maybe it's a fool's errand. I don't know. It would be nice to find literature that catalogs what has/hasn't been done in this space, or better, what works and what doesn't.

<comment><USER2> Why do you need this? Again, what are you trying to do?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe you want AutoML? There are some recent posts about getting YOLO on mobile or in tiny amounts of bytes

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking for actual research. I'm wrapping up some work on a stripped-down version of the lenet architecture and extemely low resolution non- representational data (3x3 greyscale pixels). The results appear to be better than chance and I'm quite frankly stunned - I expected complete garbage. Maybe I've missed something, but if the results are simply due to chance, I had an utterly extraordinary case of bad luck. (edit:clarity)

<comment><USER3> You probably can avoid convolution for a 3x3 grey scale.

Have you run your test multiple times with varied training sets? Did it perform well on validation data or test data?

Honestly, it sounds like a data set that is easily memorized

<comment><AUTHOR> >Have you run your test multiple times with varied training sets?

Some background - I've been working on this for several months now, experimenting with various CNNs (settling on a modified LeNet), hyperparameters and parameters. The bulk of the experiments have been failures - a typical scenario is the loss function decreasing in the training phase, but winding up unable to correctly predict labels in the test phase. There has been a progression however - from predicting either label A or B (but not both), to predicting both (but no better than chance), to doing a little bit better than chance. Maybe I'm fooling myself - I don't know. That's why I've been scouring the Internet for similar kinds of work (and not finding anything truly useful) and now reaching out to HN. If there's work out there that definitively rules out working in this space, I'm all ears. Otherwise I'm going to keep on experimenting. (edit:formatting)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Hacker News Effect – Wide but Not Deep - <AUTHOR> https://successfulsoftware.net/2019/10/07/the-hacker-news-effect-wide-but-not-deep/ <comment><USER2> I'd always cringe when looking at the bounce rate for my content that would get attention via social media/Reddit/whatever. I liked getting the raw numbers up and seeing people actually reading our stuff, but everything felt very fleeting when you start giving those numbers context compared to your more organic sources. This is all to say that the numbers don't seem very extraordinary in my experience, generally speaking.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted some stats from my recent experience being on the front page of Hackers News for a day.</comment>


Type Variance in Swift - <AUTHOR> http://nomothetis.svbtle.com/type-variance-in-swift

<comment><USER2> In this example:

        func countFurballs(shelter:Shelter<Animal>) {
            println("Furballs: \(shelter.inhabitants.count)")
        }
        var catShelter = Shelter(inhabitants:[Cat()])
        countFurballs(catShelter) // throws compilation error

I believe that the countFurballs function could be made more generic:

        func countFurballs(shelter:Shelter<T>) {
            println("Furballs: \(shelter.inhabitants.count)")
        }
        var catShelter = Shelter(inhabitants:[Cat()])
        countFurballs(catShelter) // works?

I don't have Xcode in front of me, so that may still be a compiler error, but I believe it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it could be, but that doesn't change the variance of the container itself. For instance, if instead of counting, which was admittedly a bad example, I had wanted to feed the animals, that would not have worked.

(Sorry for the delay; I assumed nobody had read it… :-) )</comment></comment>


HN Search updated - <AUTHOR>

We have just updated HN Search (http://hn.algolia.com) with major improvements:<p>- Mobile version: it now works just like your desktop version. You can select what you want to search (all, story, comment, poll) and refine/sort your queries by date (last 24h, past week, past month, forever).<p>- Phrase queries: they are now supported in the parser using "" syntax. This syntax also disables prefix search and typo tolerance for the terms of the phrase query.<p>- Not: we have added support of negative terms in your query (using -term syntax).<p>As usual, your feedback is more than welcome. We also appreciate pull requests & feature requests on our GitHub repository: https://github.com/algolia/hn-search <comment><USER2> Will Octopart be passing the hnsearch.com domain along to you since they plan to close the site?

I ask because there are a few integrations like the DuckDuckGo bang search which should probably be updated, but only once a consistent domain & query profile are in place.

<comment><USER3> I've just submitted an update request to DuckDuckGo, thank you for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was really missing SearchHN so thank you for all of the work you have put into this.</comment>


App developers beware: China's market is not to be missed - <AUTHOR> http://www.appigniter.com

<comment><USER2> Is betting legal in China?</comment>