New Story (YC S15) Plans to Rebuild Haiti Where Red Cross Failed - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3047311/100-homes-in-100-days-how-a-startup-plans-to-rebuild-haiti-where-the-red-cross-failed

<comment><USER2> Now that's an inflammatory title. Didn't local corruption mean that land- owners would gouge the Red Cross, causing them to spread aid in different ways?

<comment><USER3> Do read the ProPublica report linked in the very first paragraph and you may feel differently.

(Or click on the link to the ProPublica [0] piece and/or the related NPR piece [1] below -- the two outfits jointly investigated the Red Cross' Haiti efforts and published articles based on their findings:

[0] [https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross- raised-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half- a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes)

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the- red...](http://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red- cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief) )

P.S. Per the linked post, the Red Cross responded to these reports -- here's the link if you care to read their side:

[http://www.redcross.org/news/article/The-Real-Story-of- the-6...](http://www.redcross.org/news/article/The-Real-Story-of-the-6-Homes- Answering-Questions-about-Haiti)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey Folks,

One of the New Story founders here - happy to answer any questions.

Alexandria</comment>


Mop: Command line interface for stock quotes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mop-tracker/mop <comment><AUTHOR> This repo is broken and looks unmaintained. Thankfully there is a fork that compiles and has a few custom fixes implemented.

[https://github.com/brandleesee/TerminalStocks](https://github.com/brandleesee/TerminalStocks)</comment>


Binpod: Precompiled Binaries for CocoaPods - <AUTHOR> https://binpod.org <comment><AUTHOR> So, this is something i've been working on for a while now. What it does is enable you to use cocoapods to integrate prebuilt frameworks for any pod. binpod does this by recompiling pods into a .framework and republishing that pod to its own spec repository. All you need to do is to add a line to your Podfile and you're got to go.</comment>


Emotion reversed in left-handers' brains - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120502184836.htm

<comment><USER2> interesting, being left handed it makes me wonder how different I really am from all the right handed people in the world..</comment>


Roger McNamee says the 'like' button was 'beginning of the end' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/why-a-former-facebook-adviser-says-the-like-button-was-beginning-of-the-end-of-company-s-good-old-days-1.5007542 <comment> tj-teej Blaming the like button for the end of the "soft cuddly" side of Facebook is spurious from someone who was an investor.

Facebook didn't have to build a surveillance machine, it didn't have to extract every possible penny out of it's user's data, Facebook didn't have to stop being "cuddly"...until it raised money at an outrageous valuation and had an outrageous IPO.

Blaming the Like button for actions necessitated by Facebook selling out their users for a higher valuation/money seems a bit rich coming from one of the investors.

<comment><USER3> > _until it raised money at an outrageous valuation and had an outrageous IPO_

Lots of companies go public without developing a psychopathic culture. As Tim Cook has said, supposed conflicts between privacy-versus-profits or privacy- versus-innovation are false choices [1].

These are strategic choices Zuckerberg made and which his employees fell into step to execute. They are strategic choices investors profit from and voters tolerate. Each of these constituencies could, relatively unilaterally, knee- cap Facebook.

McNamee is making good points. This is a classic case of _ad hominum_.

[1] [https://www.ft.com/content/7fafec06-1ea2-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87...](https://www.ft.com/content/7fafec06-1ea2-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65)

<comment><USER4> I don't believe any CEO taking stance on topic like this.

Tom Cook is picturing Apple as a privacy guard, while they deploy icloud servers in China. Take with a grain of salt everything that's said by people who want to sell you things.

<comment><USER5> >while they deploy icloud servers in China

That's literally a requirement of the Chinese government for anyone offering web services in China. What exactly would you suggest they do as an alternative?

<comment><USER4> Very easy - not do a business in a country, which practices go so deeply against core values that Tim Cook claims Apple stands for.

<comment><USER5> The USA does too, as evidenced by the NSA's spying and Trump being Trump. ICE issues iPhones as government furnished equipment. They're almost certainly being used to help coordinate the caging of children.

So Apple just shouldn't do business anywhere then?

<comment><USER6> They can do business anywhere, just not while lying about what they are doing.

<comment><USER5> What's the lie exactly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've made this realization lately as well, that all "upvote" based social media is inherently toxic and bad for society. What's been lost from the days of actual internet forums is the ability to make a point, and ignore it if you don't like it. It used to be that we were all equals under the admin, and discussion was long form. However the incentives now have shifted discourse to the rhetorical and pithy, rather than creating meaningful connections. The result is a monoculture of thought that is doing real damage.

<comment><USER8> I think it has more to do with how thoughtless downvoting/upvoting can be in some implementations. But this isn't inherent to the upvote system. Requiring a comment for each vote to explain the user's position, for example, can curb this tendency.

<comment><USER9> I don't know if requiring a comment for an _upvote_ is so necessary; but requiring a comment (or an upvote of a comment) in order to downvote seems like it could help. I think the problem with upvoting tends to exist where there is no downvoting.

I'm mostly at peace with net scores on my replies, though I feel a bit confused when the scores down without explanation. I think it is healthy to some extent to seek validation, but in order for it to be productive, I think we ought to know why people feel the way they do about what we say.

<comment><USER10> I see lots of stuff upvoted thoughtlessly that might benefit from forcing the voter to explain.

<comment><USER11> I think you'd end up with a lot of

"+1 funny" "-1 Reeee"

stuff, and that'd just add noise to the thread, but not add to the discussion.

<comment><USER10> I agree, but that applies just as well to downvotes. I don't have good ideas how to run a required-comment-to-vote system, I just don't see the asymmetry between up and down.

<comment><USER9> Maybe I wasn't clear in saying that I don't think it should be necessary to _comment_ in order to downvote, but I think it should be required to upvote a reply in order to downvote (or make your own reply).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's amazing how deleting my account gave me a sense of autonomy over my own thoughts. It took a while, but after some time I didn't care about what other people liked and didn't like.

It's amazing what original thought can do for a person. That little button has more power than most people think.

<comment><USER4> This isn't facebook specific power. Need for validation is deeply rooted in our psychology.

Keep in mind, that you're posting that on a different social network (with different rules, but still - social network), that also has exactly the same system, with upvoting.

<comment><USER12> Thank you. I've been humbled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years:

1\. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; _next_

2\. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, _et cetera_ apps on your phone; _then_

3\. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; _then_

4\. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; _and finally_

5\. Log out of Facebook on your desktop.

It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?" (It's been months since I've cared to log into Facebook. Feels more like trudging through spam in an old e-mail inbox, now, than anything compelling.)

<comment><USER13> Wow. What you wrote sounds like a classic description of serious addiction. Something like an alcohol, drug, sex, or porn addict might go through. That shows the true power this type of product/service can wield over a person. These products are definitely designed to suck our time and souls. They are/were never made for the benefit of humanity, or whatever bullshit Zuckerberg and the other tech CEOs claim. They are designed to make us like the mindless slobs from Wall-E or the future humans from Idiocracy.

Glad you finally kicked the habit, though, and are more productive because of it.

<comment><USER3> > _What you wrote sounds like a classic description of serious addiction_

It's reasonable to characterize the American population as being debilitatingly addicted to social media. (Rome's leaden pipes come to mind.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The like button may have kicked the journey off, but in my opinion the point of no return for a social network turning bad is when they start treating "like" as "maybe share" (which all the big ones have eventually done).

</comment><comment><USER15> Somewhat lacking... Wish this article talked more about "why" the like button was the beginning of the end.

<comment><USER12> I believe it was discussed early on when the article states McNamee believed that's when FB started to receive emotional cues from users. But I can see why readers might want a more thorough dissection of that point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Facebooks decline began with the "Share" button. That's the one that enabled my friends to fill my feed with 3rd party bullshit. I used to go to there to see what was up with my friends, not get their take on reddit, politics and pet videos.

</comment><comment><USER17> To offer another potential inflection point: public posts. That turned Facebook from solely a social network to a broadcast network, and--while it has been successful for their business--it led to them being mired in all these political-information-broadcasting type problems.

</comment><comment><USER18> A lot of talk comes up about the facebook and twitter like buttons where most people agree that they're terrible. I for one can't imagine bothering with twitter unless there was a like button, or at least some way for people to show they agree with what the person twitted. Are they supposed to reply to with a thumbs up emoji? Or "I agree"? They really need some easy way for people to show their agreement. The older original forums are one place where people in a more closed area can talk without distinct likes, but for a more open network, there needs to be something easy for people to show support so the people creating the content know what people like.

</comment><comment><USER19> Dude! it's been 10 years now. Where have you been all along? 'Like' button was added on February 9, 2009. And, it's not going anywhere

</comment><comment><USER20> For me it was "sharing".

It was when original content got pushed aside to non-stop sharing and re- sharing of memes and propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd like to use Instagram if it had a way to turn off likes. I'd like a way to share pics with my friends without the weird feeling of expecting likes, it just changes the dynamic of the whole thing.

"I want to show you this, with no expectation of a return." would make Instagram a lot more interesting and less fake.

</comment><comment><USER22> You know what's cooler than having millions of Instagram followers? Not needing to have millions of Instagram followers. That's why I always thought that the celebrities that aren't on Instagram at all actually seem more self assured, appealing, and, believe it or not, cool.

<comment><USER23> What you're doing is just a different kind of the social signaling than the one you're trying to seem above of.

It's okay for people to enjoy Instagram. It's okay for people to not enjoy Instagram. It's okay to make one of your hobbies getting Instagram famous. Trying to put some value judgement on why one is _better_, and going out of your way to justify your own is a waste of time.

<comment><USER24> I would be careful with projecting that experience, everything is not about signaling; sooner or later mostly everyone will come to the conclusion that pretending isn't leading anywhere. Because it isn't.

Not depending on Instagram's algorithms and the opinions of its marketing department and your followers is _better_, for everyone. Dependency in general is rarely a good thing.

Judging is a different issue. But not giving a shit about what other people think usually goes hand in hand with not giving a shit about what they do either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So, what did Facebook have before the like button?

What would your ideal version of a social network be? From comments here, it seems so far:

->no selling users out

->no likes/dislikes (but then how do you filter out bad content?)

->no sharing 3rd party content?

Edited: formatting

</comment><comment><USER26> I would really  _like_ being able to disable the  _like_ button on Instagram as you can for comments. I don't like the approval seeking nature of the way it is presented.

EDIT: HN filtered out my emoji :S

<comment><USER27> I can imagine an improvement in many UI's if I had a way to tailor it for what I want, not some corporate one size fits all.

Like: 1\. See no likes. 2\. Filter out comments that are deeply nested quotes. 3\. Filter out specific people on a specific subject that I don't need to read again. 4\. Switch off all adverts. 5\. Never see a public post. 6...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm working on a blog post about this.

The issue isn't decentralization or issues like upvoting.

The issue is one of economics.

As long as we don't address the core fundamental flaw with capitalism - <USER2> capital flows towards central actors, we will never have a decentralized and fair communications structure.

What's sad is that I think it might actually be impossible without major efforts to understand the problem.

It just happens naturally and without some sort of aggressive taxation policy it's just going to keep happening over and over again.

<comment><USER29> If you analyze them deep enough, you'll find out that money (greed) is the root cause of ~90% of world problems. Taxation is just a workaround, not a solution to those problems.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In the audio clip he says it was photo tagging that started the decline followed by the like button

</comment><comment><USER30> I think Like buttons and other forms of social media voting are destructive to intelligent thought. They can generate argument ad populum fallacies so bad ideas can appear to have merit based solely on popularity. They are a good example of why true democracies always devolve into mob-rules tyranny.

</comment><comment><USER31> The thing about mechanics like upvotes/downvotes, is that they're ripe for exploitation by evil/sociopathic people. (For virality. Often for outrage- driven virality.) That's okay on a place like reddit, because things are largely pseudonymous, and if things go south, you can go to a different place or just take a break or even get a new username. Your real life network of friends and family isn't so easily abandoned or replaced.

Not so sure what the difference is with Twitter, but maybe it's one of granularity. There are no boundaries there, so people have to police things themselves with block lists, or appeal to Twitter itself to get people banned. It's also clearly ripe for exploitation by sociopaths.

[https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths](https://meaningness.com/geeks- mops-sociopaths)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI)

(What of HN? HN is moderated.)

</comment><comment><USER32> I really think the blame lies with Facebook management and not a button.

</comment><comment><USER33> The Big Bang was also the beginning of the end but saying that doesn't really accomplish much</comment>


IOS 7. Unpolished By Design. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.capwatkins.com/ios-7-unpolished-by-design

<comment><USER2> The issue with iOS 7 is that it's just not good enough. Transparency and blurs, new options draws and changes to icons to me are not worthy of being called a "reboot" — the operating system changes are purely cosmetic and as pointed out, unrefined (by design, who knows). I think the issue is that Apple have trained people to expect a certain high quality end-result, iOS 7 could have been great but misses the mark and not quite the high standard of design I and others have come to expect.

I have no doubt the operating system will get better but adding in eye candy and filters to the camera app isn't revolutionary nor frothworthy either.</comment>


Kivo: Simple document feedback in your browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.kivo.com

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Some comments:

1) It doesn't mention what file types it accepts. Since it says "presentations" I'm tempted to think .PPT, but some tools for presentations (like SpeakerDeck.com) take .PDF.

2) Why presentations? Why not documents (e.g. word processing files)? I haven't used Google Docs, but if it doesn't have feedback capability it seems like documents might be a more fruitful niche than presentations.

3) Perhaps related to (2), would it make more sense to highlight the text you want to comment on rather than drawing a box around it (which doesn't work so well if the text wraps to the next line)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the feedback!

1) Thanks, I will fix that; I agree it is not clear. We accept pptx, ppt, and pdf.

2) With early users, we found that content creation of Word documents can happen relatively easily outside of Word; this is not the case with PowerPoint. There are a couple of great online Word processors, and GDocs does a good job of annotating text. PowerPoint is different because it is still the ubiquitous way to make a presentation, a piece of software which has few alternatives, and currently no decent solution exists for this pain-point.

3.) That's a good idea. We did boxes first of all, because it's a one-size- fits-all approach and we wanted to keep it simple. We will be adding more specific annotations (text, shapes, graphs, etc.) in the future.

Thanks again for reaching out -- and feel free to email me (email@example.com) if you have any more questions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey! We've been using Kivo @ SketchDeck to discuss our designs with clients and it's been working well, thanks. Are you guys going to add versioning?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys -- yes, version-control is being added in in the next few weeks. Ping me on email@example.com if you need any help, or have any ideas re what you guys would like it to look like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome work! To edit an annotation shall I mark it as resolved and then create a new one?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Yeah, for now that would work. I can also add in editing if you think it would be useful? Shouldn't take long. If you have any more feedback or feature requests ping me on email@example.com. Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking good! A mobile app would make it sing :)</comment>


How to Hide $400M - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/magazine/how-to-hide-400-million.html <comment><USER2> The more interesting question is what is the source of all this money?

Osterlund has a net worth of $400MM. His company, Xacti, geneated revenues of $75MM per year. The article explains that Xacti "sold banner ads, video games and various other kinds of software, including "toolbars" that promised to clean viruses off your computer or free up space on your hard drive." I don't think the article really explains how this malware could generate such huge amounts of wealth.

The company's website [1] is nothing short of pathetic. The NYT article does mention that Xacti had legal troubles and was investigated for some deceptive marketing practices (like default opt-in credit card charges for trial software). At best, Osterlund is an Internet con artist.

But this still leaves questions in my mind. Can a simplistic malware fraud generate half a billion dollars of wealth? This mystery is compounded with a maze of sophisticated offshore banking structures, which sounds like more than just a way to hide assets from his wife. For example, could these structures have been used for money laundering by organized crime? Was this malware used for criminal activities beyond simply asking customers to enter their credit card numbers and charging them a few dollars?

His wife was allegedly involved in his business, and is trying to get a share of his assets in divorce proceedings. If this money had a darker story behind it, that she knew of, she would have an incentive to leave that out of this NYT story.

[1] [http://www.xacti.com](http://www.xacti.com)

<comment><USER3> > Can a simplistic malware fraud generate half a billion dollars of wealth?

Absolutely. Traffic Vance was a great example of this. They installed adware on users computers and advertisers could bid on what sites you wanted your popup ad to display on and their adware would display your popup and charge you the money.

There are shady individuals who bid $10+ for a single popup on a site like StateFarm.com with a fake "rate comparison" and the infected user would assume that the ad was associated with State Farm despite the tiny disclaimer at the bottom.

On a site like CNN a shady weight loss supplement company might have a popup with a fake news story that pushes a misleading negative option subscription that is setup in a way where the infected user assumes it is a CNN story.

The adware itself is designed to be as subtle as possible so that the user is unaware that anything suspicious is going on and views these ads as legitimate.

Traffic Vance has since been renamed several times due to this type of scrutiny, are well past their glory days, and don't push their adware anymore. Despite all of that they are still making millions[1] from all of the people who have downloaded their adware over the past 10 years that still haven't deleted the adware or gotten a new computer.

[1] [https://www.propelmedia.com/propel-media- reports-6-1-million...](https://www.propelmedia.com/propel-media- reports-6-1-million-of-adjusted-ebitda-for-the-3rd-quarter-of-2016/)

<comment><USER4> But even in Traffic Vance's case, I'm not sure that they have generated _$400 million_ over the life of the company. Even at $6M/quarter in EBITDA, it would take ~16 years to get there. I'm not sure what else this guy was into, but I doubt he made it solely with malware.

That said, nobody actually needs $400M, and there are plenty of people making $1M+/yr operating useless websites like viral news, quiz sites, etc. There is a ton of money in online advertising. Most goes to Google and Facebook, but there are still billions left over for the "little" guys. The rise of retargeting through Adsense has enabled even the most worthless of sites to show ads that generate reasonable RPM. If you can generate impressions, you can make quite a bit of money.

<comment><USER5> Is there any literature on this? I always figured Google and Facebook dominated the market so heavily everyone else was left with scraps (twitter, for example).

<comment><USER6> Actually, those guys make only a tiny slice of the value per click. Banner advertising is a low return game.

Now...if you control the landing page and conversion funnel, basically delivering paid customers (vs. clicks) to a paying merchant, your value per visit goes up by a factor of 10 - 50. $.25/click vs. $10 - $30 (varies by product).

Now imagine a company that launches dozens of offers with hundreds of variations and plows it's bankroll back into the best (most profitable) version (for years at a time).

Yeah, $400MM is possible.

<comment><USER7> You make a great point that advertising and ecommerce have no clear demarcation. Revenue for all online commerce is divided among layers of players performing specialized steps in the process, so any sizing of the online advertising market starts with an arbitrary distinction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Xacti, which came to enfold most of their ventures, sold banner ads, video > games and various other kinds of software, including "toolbars" that > promised to clean viruses off your computer or free up space on your hard > drive.

Sometimes I can't tell whether I'm an ethical and honest person, or whether that's just an excuse for not being rich.

> By his wife's account, some of Oesterlund's new friends also began tutoring > him in how to minimize his taxes.

That reminds me of how cheating in video-games spreads like a disease, socially-transmitted. [0] People enter into sub-groups where the behavior is seen as normal.

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.4915](https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.4915)

<comment><USER9> Paul Le Roux is a case study of why not - [https://magazine.atavist.com/he- always-had-a-dark-side](https://magazine.atavist.com/he-always-had-a-dark- side).

<comment><USER8> I've skimmed the link, but I'm still a little unclear: Why not what?

<comment><USER10> I interpreted it as 'why not to lose your ethics and pursue richness in questionable areas'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Like many women married to very wealthy men, she didn't know much about the > family accounts.z

Makes it sound like she married him for the money, but she didn't[0]. While it turns out she really didn't know much about the accounts[1], she help start the businesses that made the money[2].

[0] > Robert Oesterlund wasn't born rich, either. When Pursglove first met him, on a cruise ship off Helsinki in the '90s, he ran a struggling flower- import business.

[1] This is truly stupid. In a marriage, a couple should share completely all of this information. Otherwise, do not get married.

[2] > Living in Florida and New York, they started a series of companies. Oesterlund came up with most of the ideas, Pursglove would later state in court filings, and ran the companies day to day. Pursglove hired the employees, trained them and helped manage the offices.

<comment><USER12> I think that $400 million could be a lot more complicated to handle than most family accounts, especially if the family was aggressively trying to minimize their tax liability, which they were. And the finances really started to get complicated because the husband started to hide the money when Pusgrove found out about the affair. Also, the legality of the business is questionable. It looks like the money was made from adware. So I would not expect Pusgrove would want to take much credit for the management of the company.

<comment><USER6> Surprised actually. If she really did run the company "day to day", seems like she would be in a position to give him the boot (grab the accounts) vs. what actually happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A fraudster-millionaire shares a fictionalized account of her side of a soap opera story too wild for television but just right for NY Times magazine

</comment><comment><USER14> A recently arrested colonel of the Moscow anti-corruption police had $100M+ in cash in his apartment (i wonder - may be he just was working from home much?). Another $300M+ were in his bank accounts because I guess they just couldn't fit into the apartment - Russian city apartments are typically on the smaller side... I mean it is really hard to hide giving that $100M weight ~2000lb in $100 bills.

<comment><USER15> ...or you know, it was planted.

<comment><USER14> Planting a 1.5 ton of cash? Wouldn't a 100kg do it or even just a bucket of cash?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In case you're wondering, most firms in this business won't even talk to you unless you're looking to hide at least $10MM. Below that amount, the costs of setting up the corporate structures and paying all the necessary parties aren't worth it. It is kinda funny there is a practical cut off point for being "super-rich" at which point the rules start working for you.

<comment><USER17> If you're looking to hide $10MM+ with one firm, then diversification says that you have a lot more than that in total. So imo the "super-rich" cutoff is around $100M

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure that you need to diversify for that. It makes sense to have one really good lawyer who knows how to distribute it. The money will end up in different countries, trusts and with a number of partners. But if you don't want to deal with the complexity yourself, you likely need to have one expert who does. That's also why you need so much to start, it's not just about setting up one company, it's about creating a whole net of companies .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't really understand why someone would not just stay with $200M without hassles, instead of hiding $400M. The value of money is logarithmic. What can be bought with $400M that cannot be bought with $200M??

If it were a case of wife wanting 99% of his assets, it would be reasonable to fight. If I lived some of these FoaF stories where the husband is wiped out, then I'd rather go to jail (and profit from an MRA blog some years later)

<comment><USER20> To many of us, money is a tool. You convert time and effort into money, store it, then convert it back into other things when necessary or desired.

To many others, money is a high score.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I got stuck part way through. "She packed the laptop and documents, left her suitcase near the front door and went for one last walk on their beach." then a couple of lines later "When she opened her suitcase at the security line, there was no laptop. No paperwork. It was all gone."

But then the subject changes, timeline changes and I can't find what ever happened to the laptop.

<comment><USER22> The article alludes to the fact the caretaker or the older gentleman removed the laptop and documents, or someone else in the employ of the husband.

<comment><USER18> Was a bit confused by that. The way both of them are described I'd guess that they're not the nicest employers. If your employer is far away, probably doesn't pay you very well, why show such loyalty to prevent that from happening? The husband probably hadn't found out about it otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Note that the transfer pricing strategy only makes sense for this fellow because he's not a US citizen/resident. If he were, it would be illegal to not report the income of the (wildly-profitable) off-shore entity. And if you have to report the income on both sides, there's no point playing transfer pricing games.

But due to his foreign residency and citizenship, he only has to report the US-based income to the IRS, and the transfer pricing shenanigans are "legal" but subject to repricing by the IRS.

<comment><USER24> you can keep the money off shore and pay the taxes later though, no?

<comment><USER23> Not for individuals — US taxpayers have to pay tax on their worldwide income, though they can get credit for foreign taxes paid to other governments. When the income is received by an entity in a tax haven, there is generally no credit to be had.

Speaking generally, if a corporation is owned by fewer than 10 US taxpayers, there is no effective deferral. This is based on the assumption that closely- held companies are being operated at the behest of the owners and will be structured in a way that is tax efficient for the individual owners.

Public companies are not subject to these rules, and they can defer paying tax on some types of income.

<comment><USER24> yea i was more thinking of "earning" it and keeping it in the entity until its needed or wanted. that would allow you to defer taxes, yes? i was under the impression that it is not income until its paid to me as salary or dividends, that could be wrong though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interestingly, the couple might not be worth anything near $400M, and they haven't yet cracked the trust.

If I had to guess, I'd assume that everything was bought on credit, and the true net worth is somewhere south of $40M.

</comment><comment><USER26> Oesterlund's yacht the "Deja Vu" is practically a major character in this whole story.

In case you're wondering here are some pictures of the Yacht. Keep an eye out for the gaudy paintings of Oesterlund in the yacht.

[http://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/the-superyacht- direc...](http://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/the-superyacht- directory/deja-vu--66631)

<comment><USER27> and by the way, all vessels over a certain size are required (by international maritime law) to have an AIS transponder fitted and enabled.. and there are internet sites which listen and post information, so we can see that Deja Vu is currently marked in Fort Lauderdale

      http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:386175/mmsi:319642000/imo:1006556/vessel:DEJA_VU

though it seems that it has now been renamed as 'Broadwater'

[https://www.fleetmon.com/vessels/broadwater_1006556_25127/](https://www.fleetmon.com/vessels/broadwater_1006556_25127/)

so perhaps has been written out of this story..

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Actually $400m is quite easy to hide, if denominated in $100 bills. It would fit in a small 1-car garage. You could squeeze $1B in if you had a regular 2-car garage.

Souce: [http://thehustle.co/how-much-is-a-billion- dollars](http://thehustle.co/how-much-is-a-billion-dollars)

<comment><USER18> Means you lose ~2% per year (inflation) and have a problem if new notes are issued. Also, if anyone finds out your money is gone very quickly (or if the garage burns down). I'd rather buy some precoious metals. Easier to hide, although the weight means you have to be careful where you hide it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So basically, shady fraudster millionaire engages in more shady fraudulent activities, and takes steps to avoid any repercussions from illicit behavior. Not shocking at all.

<comment><USER30> Not completely. It's more like seemingly righteous woman seeks compensation for hard work she did together with her soon-to-be-divorced husband, but no, actually both are fraudsters that now try to fraud each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This looks a more readable and entertaining version of this academic journal: [http://www.emeraldinsight.com/toc/jmlc/19/1](http://www.emeraldinsight.com/toc/jmlc/19/1) ;-)

</comment><comment><USER32> Will definitely be checking this article out in full. The techniques are of particular interest to me. It might sound exotic to outsiders but I do like the suspension of disbelief that kind of comes along with fantastic wealth.

I've used "hide vast sums of money" as the basis for a long, serious screenplay based on the Enron downfall of the early 2000s in the US. Currently in review for edits. If you'd like to read I can make it available by request.

[https://www.scriptrevolution.com/scripts/do-unto- others](https://www.scriptrevolution.com/scripts/do-unto-others)

<comment><USER33> You don't have an e-mail address in your profile, else I would have used that instead.

As someone who works in finance, and has a keen interest in how the murky side of that world works, I'd love to read your screenplay.

<comment><USER32> Ack yes about that I tend to use Twitter as the fence to connect then will provide email/DropBox link. If that's not a path for you I can say it'll be public early in 2017 I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A very interesting question about divorce asset-splitting:

How are assets split if the woman (in the above story) cheated instead of the high net worth man and the man filed for divorce? Who gets what?

<comment><USER19> Typically, cheating is not a factor.

<comment><USER34> No wonder marriage is a shit deal. If love is the only thing uniting us, in a fall out, love should be the only thing that is lost.

<comment><USER35> Sign a prenup if that's your deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This puts me in mind of Bleak House [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleak_House](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleak_House). It sounds like the legal manouvering has entirely consumed the value of the estate.

</comment><comment><USER37> I didn't quite understand this bit, where she discovers all these papers and laptops full of important documents and then just leaves to take a walk!

</comment><comment><USER38> i'd just pack my stuff and leave the country the second i'd transferred the money offshore.

once you're a resident of another country you only have to share your wealth with the country you move into.

</comment><comment><USER39> Walter White, are you there?

</comment><comment><USER40> The story does not add up. What kind of person decides to go on a "beach walk" after finding documents that says their husband is worth 300M dollars? My reaction would be to get the document, and at least take a picture, and get the fuck out.

<comment><USER17> People respond in different ways in highly stressful, shocking situations.

I have a "flight" response in high stress fight or flight situations, and can empathize with her response.

<comment><USER30> Good argument. People do irrational things. But still, it's smart to assmue that taking pictures of interesting documents never hurts. I'm not worth $10k and already do it regularly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > In any given year, trillions of dollars sit safely in the offshore financial > world, effectively stateless, protected by legions of well-compensated > defenders and a tangle of laws deliberately designed to impede creditors and > tax collectors.

This. I always worry that if/when I get married -- in California where the Divorce laws are heavily in favor of the woman -- that I will be middle-aged, penniless, and will have to start over in my only known career (software development) that is brutally ageist.

So my sincere question (not trolling) to HN peeps. Are there any such banks / off shore options for the 99% not-so-wealthy crowd, whereby I could "squirrel away" just a few 1000 $ (maybe like 40, to 50K) so that in my worst-case- scenario, I don't have to start from 0. I understand there is no incentives for the "well compensated defenders" since the $ amount of such accounts won't be in millions, but surely there must be some countries / banks that offer this?

(NOTE: The intention is more to safeguard my individual future from a bad marriage and divorce and not greed. Hope you understand).

Thank you!

<comment><USER42> This is premature optimization. The California divorce regime is "community property", that is anything not covered under a prenuptial agreement is divided 50/50\. A visit to a men's rights website will unearth horror stories of abusive alimony decrees but these anecdotes are unrepresentative outliers.

A prenuptial agreement would safeguard you more than attempting to hide money overseas. Another safeguard would be to marry a person who wouldn't be eligible for alimony due to preexisting income.

I consider this sort of optimization to be an inaccurate threat model, focused on outliers rather than the expected case. The expected case in California or any other state would be that the marriage would survive if not flourish (the most common case for upper-middle-class marriages), with a contingency that a divorce would occur amicably (the second-most common case). Screening for contentious attitudes is part of the due diligence of dating.

(only on HN would I ever expect to post something like this instead of the common-sense "find the right spouse and work on your marriage and you won't have to worry about this issue")

<comment><USER43> You're sorely wrong. Divorces in several states, California included, are like mutually assured destruction with one side having twice the firepower, and _everything_ about a relationship can change in a divorce.

To OP: you don't have to hide your assets in offshore accounts, you can talk to an estate planner and look into setting up a trust (google domestic asset protection trust) and make yourself the sole beneficiary. You would no longer "own" the money and it's protected in a divorce.

Also prenups are typically worthless in the madness that is family court. Never ever ever rely on one.

<comment><USER44> > Also prenups are typically worthless in the madness that is family court. > Never ever ever rely on one.

Are you saying that prenups are worthless in the case of child support or that prenups are worthless in all cases? In the case of child-related issues, you're right. However, in the case of dividing assets, I think you might be mistaken.

I've read stories of super wealthy people with prenups who did not get screwed; i.e., the prenup held up. The best example I can find is a certain billionaire who got divorced, but I cannot mention his name without creating irrevelant political discussion. He had an ironclad prenup and it held. That's the point I want to make. Prenups still work.

<comment><USER45> >I've read stories of super wealthy people with prenups who did not get screwed

That's because we (the USA) have a two-tiered legal system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This annoys the hell out of me... someone with the net economic value of a "cruise ship photographer" wants to get half(or more?) of their spouse's assets. Old news...people sleep with you and live in your home, and demand half of what you worked to create.

<comment><USER47> Someone with the net economic value of a cruise ship photographer??? Before they got married, Oesterlund ran a struggling flower importer. Is it really so hard to believe that Pursglove was fairly heavily involved in his post- marriage success? Particularly in light of quotes like:

"Pursglove hired the employees, trained them and helped manage the offices."

<comment><USER46> > "Pursglove hired the employees, trained them and helped manage the offices."

And yet she had no idea about where the money went, the people paid to manage it, or really _anything_ else. She was scorned, I get that, and she wanted half of what was _his_...not hers.

<comment><USER47> Again though, is that really so hard to believe? Oesterlund funded one of the relevant trusts (to the tune of $48 million) the day that Pursglove found his new girlfriend. Give this quote a read:

"Another bank statement they handed over showed that on a single day in 2014, Oesterlund transferred $48 million into one of the Cook trusts. It was the same day, Fisher quickly realized, that Pursglove discovered Oesterlund with his new girlfriend. Fisher believed this would be strong evidence in court that the trust had been set up in anticipation of owing his wife money, which even in most offshore jurisdictions is against the law."

Or, consider this quote:

"It turned out that in early 2013, after Pursglove asked Xacti's executives to inform her of any large cash transfers or major business decisions, Oesterlund ordered Middleton to cut her off. Over email, he told Middleton to ban her from their Boca Raton offices and to remove Pursglove as a signatory to the company bank accounts."

Oesterlund went out of his way to freeze Pursglove out of the bank accounts and even funded a $48 million trust when she found out that he had a girlfriend. How could anyone reasonably conclude that she should have an idea where the money went? It seems way more reasonable to conclude that he conducted an organized campaign to keep her from knowing that information.

A less charitable interpretation would be that Oesterlund and Pursglove knew they were involved in an illegal operation and wanted to give Pursglove the chance to say, "I don't know" if she were under investigation by the Secret Service, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An old-school reply to an advertiser's retro threat - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b57fee24-cb3c-11e5-be0b-b7ece4e953a0.html <comment><USER2> HP released the letter [1] in the hopes that it would make them look better, but the threat is still at the end of it. Not sure how that makes anything better.

[1] [http://www.prweek.com/article/1382556/hewlett-packard- enterp...](http://www.prweek.com/article/1382556/hewlett-packard-enterprise- releases-letter-sent-ft-journalist-dispute-ad-threat-claim)

<comment><USER3> It just confirms Kellaway's point that the editorial side of a newspaper is supposed to be independent of the advertising. If we wanted advertising disguised as journalism or editorial decisions taken by the advertisers we could read a trade magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As recently as two days ago I finished reading Porter Erisman's "Alibaba's World" in which he described his and Alibaba's run in with both Meg Whitman and Henry Gomez, who were then working on eBay China. What I read Erisman describe as his bitter experiences with Gomez then, and I read described in the article today, came as no surprise to me really.</comment>


A Man Must Do What He Must: Hammett's Pragmatism (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thrillingdetective.com/non_fiction/e011.html <comment><AUTHOR> Some context on this essay - I've been making my way through Bret Victor's collection of links [0] and started reading diSesssa's Knowledge in Pieces, which opens with this quote:

"Nobody thinks clearly, no matter what they pretend. Thinking's a dizzy business, a matter of catching as many of those foggy glimpses as you can and fitting them together the best you can. That's why people hang on so tight to their beliefs and opinions; because, compared to the haphazard way in which they arrived at, even the goofiest opinion seems wonderfully clear, sane, and self-evident. And if you let it get away from you, then you've got to dive back into that foggy muddle to wangle yourself out another to take its place."

I didn't recognise the quote, but the author seemed familiar (Dashiell Hammett), so I looked it up and found this fascinating essay on the relationship between how Hammett's detectives thought, how Hammett himself thought, and what changed over the course of his career as his philosophical views shifted from pragmatism to Marxism.

[0] [http://worrydream.com/refs/](http://worrydream.com/refs/)

<comment><USER2> A similar notion, in more elegant language (in my opinion) by Herman Melville in _Moby Dick_ :

 _Here 's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity;_

 _God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that._

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How come I've never heard of him during my logic classes in college and in the textbooks?

</comment><comment> Iwan-Zotow You gotta do what you gotta do

</comment><comment><USER4> > Hammett, a pragmatist? Wasn't he a Marxist?

Because you cannot be both?

<comment><USER5> Philosophically, you cannot be both. At best, you might come to accept the shortcomings of the pragmatic critique, for pragmatic reasons. This would be a very Marxian conclusion.

Marxism is a tradition of thought associated with left Hegelianism, which was an opposition to right Hegelianism. Without the latter, there might not be a basis for the former.

Right Hegelianism might be weighed as a pre-condition for Pragmatism, because it reasons that contradictions will negate themselves if sufficiently pursued, whereas Left Hegelianism reasons that the pursuit is unavoidable.</comment></comment>


Google Puts The Squeeze On Free Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/23/google-puts-the-squeeze-on-free-apps/ <comment><USER2> I don't know. I agree with Google on this one. There should be more people paying for this awesome service.

And to be honest, 50 accounts is still a lot. Having 50 or so employees in a company is a fairly large company, companies with that many people can fork up $50/user/year

<comment><USER3> The question isn't really "can they" but "will they"? A lot of big companies have very cheap office deals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My advice to Google is to lower the user threshold, possibly as low as 12-25 and create a middle-tier pricing option.

1\. Bootstrapped 2\. SMB 3\. Enterprise

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the prices are currently:

        0-50 users: $0
        50+  users: 50 * 50 = $2500 - ouch!

<comment><USER6> For a company with 50+ employees, $2500 per year is not a major expense, relative to rent and payroll. Still vastly cheaper than MS Office.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but perhaps companies in the middle, with less than 50 employees, might be willing to spend some money, but not $50 a year per employee. Say, a 10 employee company - that's 500$ a year, which isn't huge, but not peanuts either. If Google could get 200$ out of them, and still make a profit, it seems like a win for everyone. No idea what their actual costs are, but they can't be that high if the advertising is anywhere close to covering them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We use the paid gmail system in our office and it's the best thing that ever happened to our email infrastructure! Pretty cheap and super easy.</comment>


Ask HN: Sw dev with more physical action, outdoors and with people - <AUTHOR> Hello!
I am a sw dev for 10+ years now but I always liked working with my hands, for example in my workshop and I like the outdoors as well. Also I like beeing with people, having conversations and such. As you might know, sw development is not exactly physical, usually not done outdoors and there are not very many social interactions involved.
So, after thinking about this for quite a while, are there any software development jobs or (related) activities (that earn money) that involve also working with my hands on physical objects, maybe even outdoors and with more people involved?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Would home automation systems fall into this? Could start with systems based around Airplay (I did this for my house) then maybe move on to something like Crestron or ? It's not really software development but it could include specking out components, installation, configuration, etc... I've seen both houses and businesses with systems like that so - could get you a nice cross section of different people to interact with.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> fyi, I found an old HN thread on a similar topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626491)</comment>


Followed Product Hunt Launch Guide, Here Are the Results - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@surfcoderepeat/i-put-ph-launch-guide-to-test-and-this-is-what-happened-6ddd9b271ec3 <comment><AUTHOR> Quick update, since this post the site got 220k page views, got mentioned in some news and now for some weird reason people are making videos about it [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=whatifbitcoin.c...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=whatifbitcoin.com) .... conclusion: START CREATING MORE SIDE PROJECTS</comment>


Ask HN: What reading material would you provide to a visiting alien being? - <AUTHOR>

This submission is inspired by a quote from my previous submission.
Suppose a group of alien beings were to learn our language and randomly selected you as a source of further human knowledge. They send one of their kind to your home and the being informs you that it will be crashing at your place for a few weeks to learn whatever it can.
I realize this scenario is rather contrived, but what reading material would you provide to such a being? Remember that this being likely does not have the contextual knowledge that would be required to understand your favorite books. <comment><USER2> The Oxford English Dictionary.

It defines every English word they're going to ever come across outside of technical literature, it's got tons of historical examples, shows the connections between English and other languages, and more.

If we extrapolate the speed with which Google is learning to harvest latent information out of data dumps out just 20 or 30 years, I wouldn't be surprised if aliens smart enough to get here could pull a huge amount of culture and history out of the OED.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would start with world history -- first a book that covers the last few millennia, then specific books on significant events. Next would be a few of Karen Armstrong's books on religion; books such as the New Testament might prove difficult to understand without proper background.

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics would probably be a good starting point for math. I'm not aware of any great texts that provide the same level of broad introduction to science.

</comment><comment><USER3> \- The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, 1973 (Douglas North, Robert Thomas): Nobel Economic Historian North explains how institutions and property rights determine how human beings got along with each other through history; this is important, so they don't think we're mass murderers by design

\- some school biology book on natural selection, evolution

\- The Princeton Companion to Mathematics

\- Goedel, Escher, Bach: introduction to the "weirdness" of the human brain

\- the little prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry): human beings and their quirks

\- Several editions of Popular Mechanics

</comment><comment><USER4> A RSS feed reader, pre-filled with top 1000 feeds covering various topics, from news to technology to gossip! I'd get the alien to spend the first half of his time reading these feeds, and the latter half I'd show him Google.com and ask him to find out what he doesn't even know he could have found out about! A trip to the urban jungle (Manhattan) and a trip to a natural area, and the being would be all set! :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Wikipedia.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Bible (any version. Or Qu'ran, or similar epic religious tome).

The 3rd party viewpoint would be very interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Without proper historical context I believe the Bible would be somewhat confusing.

<comment><USER7> It's confusing, even with proper historical context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd probably start with ABCs and those "See Spot Run" books. Oh, and anything by the good Doctor (Seuss, that is.)

After several years (if they are clever and good with languages), perhaps they'd be ready to work on Nancy Drew and Harry Potter.

Why assume they can read? This way they can get the context.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd probably want to gauge the aliens' true intent first. If it seems to be good, then I'd carefully select their media exposure so that they'd feel guilty for not taking me and my family with them to their advanced corner of the galaxy when they decide our planet isn't worth the effort.... :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I had a Prof once that said there were two ways to become a Psychiatrist.

1\. Go to medical school

2\. Read The Bible, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky

I'd tell them to read The Bible, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky

Cheers

</comment><comment><USER11> How about philosophy. It would be hard for them to get the other stuff(excluding math and science). I don't know if they could get our philosophy either, since the way we think and see the world is very tightly coupled with our psychology, but we can assume that if they got our language(lets call it blubish) they either understand humans to some degree, or are themselves similar to us(or similar enough to understand us).

<comment><USER12> I think that an applied philosophy text would be more interesting. You know, something like Cosmo, or Weekly World News.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The first 5 pages of digg perhaps? I mean, they will find out about it eventually, might as well warn them up front right?

But seriously, I think an encyclopedia would be a good bet but the very first message we send should probably be one the reiterates peaceful intentions. With our history of warfare anything such as a dictionary or Encyclopedia given without context could be seen as a threat of further violence.

</comment><comment><USER14> The hitchiker's guide to galaxy.

<comment><USER6> In theory, they already posses this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The Little Engine That Could" and "Everybody Poops"

</comment><comment><USER16> Codex Seraphinianus.

</comment><comment><USER17> Probably A history of computing and technology from flight upwards. Then give them a low down on wars and show them how ruthless we are.. Then before they go to bed i'd read them the bible as a short fictional story.

</comment><comment><USER18> The War of the Worlds, so that they know that they can't mess with humans.

</comment><comment><USER2> Is anyone else gritting their teeth and cringing, waiting for someone to say "Atlas Shrugged" ?

:-)

</comment><comment><USER19> The Enquirer, because... inquiring minds want to know.

</comment><comment><USER20> My name card.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book"

</comment><comment><USER22> The only book anyone, human or alien, really needs to read is -

"On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection"

by Charles Darwin, 1859.

"The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, 1974 is a good appendum there as well but once mastering "Origin" one really has the basics one needs.

<comment><USER5> While I think it's safe to say that we are a planet full of evolved lifeforms; it seems a bit narrow minded to me to suggest that all potential visitors we could meet would also have evolved.

What precludes an "intelligently designed" being from being the first non- terrestrial life-form we encounter?

For all the talk we have here about the Singularity, I would assume that the first signs of life from Earth that any other civilization would meet would probably be something engineered by man. (Assuming we're meeting them somewhere other than our solar system.)</comment></comment>


Imgur.com is down - <AUTHOR> http://www.imgur.com/ all imgur servers are down <comment><USER2> They're using cloudflare and was affected by this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5313147></comment>


Pogo Stick Sharing Micro Mobility Startup Cangoroo Is Truly Beyond the Pale - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/pogo-stick-sharing-micro-mobility-company-cangoroo-is-t-1835184447 <comment><USER2> I disagree with the author of this post. Sometimes the purpose is not just to go from Point A to Point B, but to have a little bit of fun and who cares when or where you end up. I think this satisfies that urge.</comment>


Startup Bootcamp 2010 Announced (9/11/10 @ MIT) - <AUTHOR> http://startupbootcamp.mit.edu/?2010

<comment><USER2> I attended last year and thought it was fantastic and would definitely recommend it!

Clickable: <http://startupbootcamp.mit.edu/>

The site has a registration form and the date of the event.

Saturday, September 11, 2010. 9:00 am. Kresge Auditorium, MIT.

When I checked the site this morning, no list of speakers had been posted. However, last year they had several excellent speakers and videos of most of last years talks can be found on JustinTV at: <http://www.justin.tv/startupbootcamp/>.

My favorite talks from last year included:

\- Dharmesh Shah, OnStartups (<http://www.justin.tv/startupbootcamp/b/258647787>)

\- Drew Houston, Dropbox (<http://www.justin.tv/startupbootcamp/b/258647539>)

\- Adam Smith, Xobni (<http://www.justin.tv/startupbootcamp/b/258647824>)

\- Alexis Ohanian, Reddit (<http://www.justin.tv/startupbootcamp/b/258648107>)

\- Angus Davis, TellMe (<http://www.justin.tv/startupbootcamp/b/258647971>)</comment>


Ask HN: How many Karma points do I need to downvote? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> PG set the downvote threshold to 500 [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1853529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1853529)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the link.

<comment><USER3> Hasn't there been speculation that this has changed since?

<comment><USER4> Based on user stories. it appears that the algorithm that upgrades users to allow downvoting may only run periodically. So people hit 500 or 501 but don't instantly get the ability.

For what it's worth I was just about to get the downvote when the threshold went from 200 to 500. I thought, how will I ever get that many points? because back then 200 seemed like a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And are there any other perks when you reach certain threshold?

<comment><USER6> I think the 3 'perks' are: \- flag posts at 20 points; \- create a poll at 200 points; \- downvote at 500 points

<comment><USER7> Create a poll? Is there a special interface for it?

I have 1.8k points and nothing about polls in /submit.

<comment><USER8> There's a url, it's mentioned in the faq:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

<comment><USER7> Thanks, looks like I should read the FAQ more often...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Which video sharing website you like most? - <AUTHOR>

Facebook or Google Videos <comment><USER2> Youtube.

And Google Video closed down years ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like both</comment>


Show HN: Orator – An ActiveRecord ORM for Python - <AUTHOR> http://orator-orm.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Orator is a brand new ORM for Python following the ActiveRecord pattern with a pinch of magic in it.

Its main goal is simplicity. I want it to be really easy to read and write with useful features out of the box (relationships decorators, timestampable models, soft deletes, protection against mass assigment, model events, caching).

I started it as a personal need for simplicity when defining my models which is one of the things I like about Ruby On Rails.

It is inspired by the database part of the Laravel PHP framework, but modified to be more pythonic.

<comment><USER2> I'll ask the inevitable question: how does this compare to SQLAlchemy ORM?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using SQLAlchemy for quite some time now and it's a rich and powerful ORM, no doubt.

However, I found it to sometimes be a bit too complex for simple use cases.

Orator aims at simplicity. You can define your models quickly in a natural fashion. For that, Orator uses some magic and conventions (you do not need to define your model columns for example).

Regarding features, Orator provides useful ones out of the box compared to default SQLAlchemy (timestampable models, soft deletes).

Performance-wise, I have made some small benchmarks on my end, and Orator stands up pretty well but it some cases it is not as efficient as SQLAlchemy due to the ActiveRecord pattern, but nothing drastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks pretty nice. Aside from wondering how it compares to SQLAlchemy, I'm also interested in how mature you believe it to be currently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, I still consider it to be in beta, due to the fact that, for now, it has not been used widely.

However, I've been using it on a production project since the 0.4 version without any problem.

I hope to have some feedback to fix and improve things and reach the first stable version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi, looks very nice! Would you like to write about what are the main differences compared to sqlalchemy? Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know what functional merits this might have over SQLAlchemy, but I will say its API looks _much_ nicer, cleaner, and simpler than SQLAlchemy.</comment>


Apple is running on fumes - <AUTHOR> http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2015/07/10/apple-4/

<comment><USER2> So wrong it's almost a parody of tech journalism. In a couple months, Apple sold only 2,000 of a luxury item that required making a special appointment to buy, grabbing an extra $20mm. It recently rose to take 92% of the profits of the top 8 smartphone companies. Overall it's making record profits the history of corporations.

Just goes to show how wrong the central premise of this article is. Companies are absolutely not about individuals. They are the result of thousands of people working together to create something. Apple is doing fine without Steve Jobs. People like to attach companies to personalities because it works well with our animal brains, but that's just a mental shortcut that proves itself wrong time and time again, no matter how often we try to justify it. Apple is where it is because it hired thousands of smart, dedicated people, not because of one person's imagination, however romantic that idea might be.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup - Find the top solar installers near you - <AUTHOR> http://www.ohmji.com

<comment><USER2> 1\. Horrible name, you have to have a name that's SEO friendly for something like this. You aren't in a type of business that spreads through word of mouth, you are in a type of business that gets found through google search.

2\. You should add a way to input the user's city/state automatically. And make that function a lot more prominent. A big, giant, search box would do wonders for you.

3\. Too much white, you should bring up that footer image higher. Because right now it's below the fold, so all a user sees is a boring search box on a white background.

4\. Add a solar power related header image.

5\. let users sort results by price and # of installs

<comment><AUTHOR> By number: 1) Name was a tough one. In the end we opted for something that didn't have solar or green or anything 'eco' in it. It is unbelievable how many companies in this space have names so similar they are indistinguishable. We hoped this difference might be memorable. And it may be... 2) Do you mean adding autocomplete in the search text field? 5) Sort is coming.

<comment><USER3> Re: 2), I think he means "use a geolocation IP database to pre-populate the city/state that the visitor is in", similar to how yelp uses geolocation to point you to the right local yelp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When you come to a city that isn't found it still tries to display all the metadata in the sidebar, but it's all blank.

I searched for Kamloops.BC and the averages were there with no numbers.

All in all it seems like a pretty cool service. You just need to work on the search and get more data.

</comment><comment><USER5> It works exactly as I thought it would. ZIP in addition to city/state works, which is nice. I trust you get referral fees for your revenue model.

One note: the play on OMG is cute, but probably not a good brand fit for what you're selling here, though.

All in all, very well done.

<comment><USER6> Ohmji is a really awesome startup name, but I agree not a good fit for this market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why so little data for Austin, TX?

It'd be nice to add some more educational information that explains the benefits of solar in my home. How much do I save in X years? How much do I reduce emissions by?

How about incorporating ratings and comments on each company? I'd rather just ask for a quote from the top company.

I like the radius/shaded region that indicates the area of service.

Also, this might not be very important, but the name ohmji isn't very obvious for some people. It does make for a cool resistor logo though :). I understand since I studied electrical engineering, but for someone who isn't familiar with units of resistance it might make sense to call it something plain and boring like "solar finder".

<comment><AUTHOR> We've begun with California data only. Texas is on the short-list of places we'll target next, Austin especially.

Are there specific things you would like to know about solar installers or about what it's like to install solar that you would want to hear from solar owners themselves in reviews and comments?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Personally I think you are too early.

Solar power has such a poor ROI that you would only do it if you don't do the math. It's not even good for the environment, since it takes so much energy to make a solar panel.

Basically you have almost no market.

If I could suggest something else, add ground source heat pumps. Those have a great ROI, but are not very common, and it's hard to find installers.

<comment><USER9> Not sure why this is getting downvoted, this is a valid point to keep in mind while determining focus, and a review of a startup should include its core focus, no? I personally agree that "Solar Panel Installer search" is too narrow a market to make a decently sized business out of.

There may be no PR buzz to be had in Heat Pumps and insulation, but it's much lower hanging fruit in terms of ROI and carbon emissions reduction.

I would personally try to broaden the site to include all manner of energy saving tech, with installer search being a key part. I do think there is a market for that, and if you can drive referrals, I think there is revenue potential. Let solar installer search be the press sizzle, and throw in some steak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How about combining the "Solar Cost Estimates" with a local estimate of sun- hours to give an estimate of how long it'll take to recoup the installation cost? That's the sort of feature that'll land your site on feel-good morning shows.

And what's with the name? There's no association to sun in it, and there's no way I'll remember it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Features that highlight solar payback are planned

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "St. Louis, MO" is not found "Saint Louis, MO" is, though you have no data.

No one from St. Louis would type it out.

<comment><USER9> Is there a compelling reason not to drop in Google's geocoding service and just do a lat/long proximity search? (I'm assuming you have the locations of the installers in lat/long form)

<comment><USER11> Usually it is dollars. If you are going to Geocode more than a handful of locations they need to be paid.

<comment><USER9> The free limit is 15,000/day/IP - if your users use your key using the GMaps javascript library, I don't believe that counts against your server's quota, since it's coming from a distinct IP per request. 15k/day is a lot of installers...

Edit - And my reply wasn't meant to question you, you just illuminated the issue well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> search for "san francisco" and it looks like you don't have any thing in "san francisco".

1) Have a helper message: "you forgot to include a state"

2) or give a list of cities called "san francisco" in different states

This may seem dumb, but I put my mouse in the search field- I saw "San Luis Obispo" (from past searches) and clicked enter. For a second I thought you guys just don't have my city covered.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. We'll be enabling city-only search soon. I didn't realize how many people would blow by the 'city, state' hint without pause...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How do you stop google maps or other databases from pulling all your data?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks in advance for your feedback. -Jason

</comment><comment><USER14> Jason,

Congrats with the launch!

</comment><comment><USER15> Well done, too narrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> by narrow do you mean you want to see more features, a broader thematic focus, results for more cities?</comment></comment>


How to Bankrupt a Company in 26 Days - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dooplejoy/do-you-know-what-a-unicorn-is-8cfd60baec16 <comment><USER2> What did I just read? A parody?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes!</comment></comment>


A guide to proper use of animation in UX - <AUTHOR> https://uxdesign.cc/the-ultimate-guide-to-proper-use-of-animation-in-ux-10bd98614fa9 <comment><USER2> Most animation is visual spam. The proper way to use animation is to _NOT_ use it except when there is absolutely no other way to communicate something.[1] Material Design is fundamentally broken, because it tries to simulate physical motion, which is terrible for accessibility, so I don't think it's a good source to cite. Browsing the Web over the past few years has become an often- nauseating experience.

Edit: here is some reading for the downvoters:

[https://usability.yale.edu/web- accessibility/articles/animat...](https://usability.yale.edu/web- accessibility/articles/animated-moving-scrolling-flashing-or-changing-content)

[https://alistapart.com/article/designing-safer-web- animation...](https://alistapart.com/article/designing-safer-web-animation- for-motion-sensitivity)

[https://simplyaccessible.com/article/animations/](https://simplyaccessible.com/article/animations/)

[http://accessibility.psu.edu/animations/](http://accessibility.psu.edu/animations/)

[https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/04/designing- accessibi...](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/04/designing- accessibility-inclusion/#lens-animation-effects)

[1] except in gaming, where animation is expected and reasonable

<comment><USER3> > The proper way to use animation is to NOT use it except when there is > absolutely no other way to communicate something.

While it is true that _some_ animations are excessive, I find that a certain amount of animation makes it less taxing to follow what is happening on screen. If big changes happen suddenly and without animation then I have to spend a little bit of extra time to figure out what moved where relative to where it was before and what was added, removed or changed.

Mainly I mean when changes happen automatically, like if something was dynamically added, removed or changed by the system. Not, say, if I initiated a page-down with my keyboard in mutt etc.

<comment><USER4> There's no need for animation to highlight changes. E.g. if a new item appears suddenly in a list, it can use bold text so it stands out. It can then immediately change to non-bold when you interact with it. This has the additional advantage that the change is obvious even if you were looking away when the item appeared. I've never seen a UI animation that was better than no animation.

<comment><USER5> The problem with your proposal is that the meaning of the "bolded" item is not immediately -or perhaps even with careful thought- obvious to anyone except the person proposing the idea, or the people who have already encountered the same idea beforehand.

We don't have a widely-understood cross-cultural shorthand for annotating an item's 'newness'. By contrast, we are all familiar with objects retaining their identity while they move.

When I minimize my window in macOS, it physically transforms and is sent to its new location. I know where the window I was working on went, and I as a person would have a good reason to be able to somewhat or even mostly comprehend this even if I hadn't ever seen macOS before.

With no animation, the large and prominent window I have been using would immediately disappear with no indication where it went, and the minimized icon in the dock would be highly likely to be overlooked. It would also look almost exactly like "closing" the window, and it would be easy for an inexperienced user to think minimizing a window and closing it are the same thing. I can assure you, this blurred conceptual distinction is not an imaginary problem.

Sure, I don't personally need this animation because I'm an experienced user already. However, in almost all cases it is fundamentally flawed to approach interface design by considering only the needs and preferences of experienced users.

<comment><USER4> Why does the meaning have to be obvious to inexperienced users, at the cost of making things worse for everybody else? We don't let untrained users drive cars unsupervised, and cars are much simpler than computers. I say that considering only the needs of inexperienced users is a fundamentally flawed approach.

<comment><USER6> I agree (and often use the same example of cars). I believe the reason is simple and sad - UI is meant to sell your product (or more likely these days, service). UI and UX panders to new users because that's who they have to impress; after purchase/subscribe decision is made, their feedback rarely matters (and there are plenty of ways to make them stick around, including exploiting sunk cost and network effects). Add to that the fact that regular users _accept what they 're given_, because they have little experience to know things could be better, and you have a perfect recipe for UIs promoting sellability over user productivity.

<comment><USER7> Moreover, users tend to protect what they're given. It is not unusual to hear _probably they know better_ against your criticism of ui, physical (like in cars) or on-screen. Or even worse, lower grade touch screen. People believe that manufacturers are gods of knowledge and engineering, because of that same marketing I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Numerous researches have discovered that optimal speed for interface animation is between 200 and 500 ms"

They are still too slow.

If you have an android phone, go into developer options and turn animation scale to 0.5x (animation duration is halved, so they are twice as fast). You'll be amazed how much faster the OS feels.

<comment><USER9> Fun fact: The default Start Menu pop-up delay in Windows XP was 400ms. Once of the first things I always did was reduce it to <100ms on every new machine I used.

<comment><USER7> While for you (and most of us here) that delay was too slow, it also served a purpose -- users who can barely hold the mouse would diagonally go from parent to e.g. 4th child element too slowly and lose the submenu on the way, because it would disappear after the same delay if cursor was not on parent-or-child. Otoh, windows devs could arguably make it independent and the problem could disappear.

In short, with 100ms you have to go ¬-shaped and with 400ms you can go \\-shaped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Someone please explain to me, why we have all these animations nowaways other than 'because we can' \- what purpose do they actually have?

<comment><USER10> They may be useful for beginners.

Otherwise mundane app will look much more sophisticated. It can also make the experience more fun, which makes it easier to addict the user. Just think why slot machines are so colorful and flashy. Would they have same appeal if they would look and behave like a parking meter?

I would not mind animations if:

\- they would not slow me down - I'm faster than them and I have to wait. It would be interesting if animations would be faster or disabled when user interacts faster than some threshold.

\- they would be interruptible

\- they would not cause performance degradation

\- they would not add more bugs. As with most asynchronous actions they are not properly tested when things happen simultaneously or are interrupted.

<comment><USER11> An automatic option to disable animations if the user is faster certainly seems like an interesting one.

Though it may be interesting just to let users choose whether they want to see animations in general. That'd solve a lot of problems here, and additionally give you some metrics in regards to how many people like the things.

<comment><USER2> > Though it may be interesting just to let users choose whether they want to > see animations in general.

That would be the ideal solution. Make a setting in browsers and devices where users could turn off all animations. Designers could test their UIs with the setting on and off. Everyone would be happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> \- huge sticky header

\- some sticky like and share feature on the side

\- weird contrasts which are not comfy for the eyes

\- too many animations (this might not count at all)

This sums up most things I hate about modern web pages actually. Why use all these things? Especially huge sticky headers are just super annoying. Please don't use them. Thanks.

Also link related: [https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky- headers/](https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/)

<comment><USER11> Honestly, I never got the hatred for sticky headers and navbars. Yes they're ridiculous if they're too big, but having the menu in an easily accessible place is usually a good thing. I mean, there's a reason mobile apps and desktop programs have menu bars rather than some other design solution.

Does that mean they're always done well? No, things like Medium's 'please join our service/subscribe to see more from [name]' are ugly and pointless, and nothing more than a visual distraction. Sticky ads (or for that matters, ads that try to take over large parts of the page in general) are also terrible for obvious reasons.

And yes, a lot of 'fancy' design techniques just hurt the usability of the page, as seen with anything that hijacks scroll/overuses parallax effects.

But I don't think sticky elements are bad in of themselves, and they can make the site easier to use if done correctly.

<comment><USER13> The issue is that I can already scroll to the top to see the navbar, and interacting with it is a small fraction of what I do on a website. In fact, when clicking into media (like a news article or blog post), I'm not even going to interact with it once.

Yet I must endure all of its downsides the whole time I'm on the page, from taking up precious screen real estate to the even more annoying approach of popping in and out when I scroll up/down one pixel.

Just think of how seldom you interact with the navbar of most webpages and why it then needs to follow you around the page in the off chance that it's more convenient than just scrolling to the top.

So far I remain unconvinced that it can be done well since the entire premise is flawed: my device already gives me a one-click scroll-to-top shortcut. Like inertia scrolling, it's a bad smell when every website thinks it has to bring its own implementation of feature devices should already have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Web animation is treated in a different way. Since we are accustomed to an > almost instant opening of web-pages in a browser, we expect to transit > between different states quickly as well. So, the duration of web > transitions should last about 2 times shorter than on mobile devices — > between 150–200 ms.

So, let me get this right. Animations on th web should be fast, because we're used to the web being fast. Animations on mobile should be slow, because we're used to mobile apps being slow?

> In other cases, the user will inevitably think that the computer freezes or > has troubles with the internet connection.

But on mobile, that is normal?

If I ever need to write a mobile app, I think I've got an idea to make my app feel a lot faster than its competitors.

</comment><comment><USER15> They talk so much about Material Guidelines. If only Google themselves followed them, [https://grumpy.website/post/0QcZsPBJl](https://grumpy.website/post/0QcZsPBJl)

</comment><comment><USER16> You can also don't use animation at all. I really don't like animations even when used correctly.

</comment><comment><USER17> Overall a good article. I learned that speed should depend on the screen size, something I had never thought about.

What I don't understand is that we are not supposed to use motion blur. Is it only because it's hard to do right?

Also I always thought that the "when the moving objects transform their size disproportionally, they should move along the arc rather than in a straight line" thing felt wrong. Anybody else feels this way?

</comment><comment><USER18> Gratuitous animation like the ones showed in this article are not "proper".

Animation can serve a communication (and hence UX) purpose, but when everything is animated it defeats its purpose.

It also has to be noted that the more animations there are, the better GPU you need, which can create a false need of a new device.

</comment><comment><USER19> The author of this article should read some guide to proper posting animated images on the web. Having examples implemented in CSS would probably be easier on resources than those awful fullHD GIFs.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or > exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an > article is.

\--[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment>