Ask HN: Lean methodologies and Brand frameworks? - <AUTHOR>

In the HN startup "scene" it seems like a lot of entrepreneurs use "Lean" methodologies, but stumble on Brand development, or have a million ways to skin that cat semi-arbitrarily.<p>Does anyone know of a standardized framework and language for Brand that aligns with and expands on Lean methodology? <comment><USER2> Thanks for opening this fascinating discussion @decentrality. Sean's structure (which has clearly emerged from practice) coincides with the Lean Branding book's perspective on brand building, measurement and learning.

I wanted to share how my perspective weighs in on the "semantics debate", and it is a product of both my academic and consulting experiences. I studied business (undergraduate), design management (graduate) and psychology (doctoral) to arrive at an integral definition of brand that would incorporate both business objectives (which in the startup world often translate to traction and conversion) and consumer psychology. After looking at these definitions theoretically, I began doing consulting work for politicians, government institutions, and companies of all sizes in South America. In particular, I led a Lean Branding program for 303 entrepreneurs (97 tech startups) over the last 3 years to arrive at a framework that would effectively help practitioners "that need this muddy water cleared to be able to aggregate their values"(like you pointed out). After all, it is a matter of pragmatism: we need to understand this in order to capitalize on it. That's exactly why I wrote this book.

These experiences shaped my definition of brand, which is described in the book as "the unique story that consumers recall when they think of you. This story associates your product with their personal stories, a particular personality, what you promise to solve, and with your position in relation to competitors. Your brand is represented by your visual symbols, and feeds from multiple conversations where you must participate strategically."

There are four key aspects to the definition that the Lean Branding book proposes:

\- It embraces consumer co-creation: your brand does not exist in isolation. It is shaped by consumer perception. \- It is story-centered: consumers recall your brand as an holistic story- the sum of both experiences AND symbols. (Coinciding with Sean here) \- It highlights empathy: consumers look for your brand because of what it can do for them (how your value story connects with THEIR personal stories). \- It allows for iteration (a dynamic brand): the brand feeds from multiple, ongoing conversations (about its value).

The most commonly known definition of brand comes from the American Marketing Association: "A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers." As you've probably noticed, it is focused on identity and assets.

The Lean Branding book's definition is closest to Seth Godin's, which is: "A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it's a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn't pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer."

I'd be happy to answer any questions via Twitter (@laurabusche, @leanbranding) or email firstname.lastname@example.com

Lean Branding is out now (Amazon, Barnes and Noble & O'Reilly) and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for opening this thread.

My very best,

LB

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your very detailed reply, especially digging into the semantics debate of you and Beard vs. Gardner.

Since I began this thread, after I invited Ries to weigh in, I wrote this on Medium to expand further on where Beard's ideals lead me, as I think through The Lean Brand. I'd really appreciate it if you could weigh in on that also ( here or there is fine ) when you have another moment:

[https://medium.com/@DonovanKeme/brand-as-relationship-vs- inf...](https://medium.com/@DonovanKeme/brand-as-relationship-vs- influence-376e8b6dce95)

In the meantime, since you and Gardner both obviously spent a small eternity each on thinking through a definition or contemporary usage of the word Brand, it seems like that comes through most of all in your reply. As someone who appreciates etymology deeply, which I always keep in mind -- I'll continue searching for a framework and language for Brand, thinking out loud about your definition, for you to respond on also. I feel very fortunate to have an author of one of the two books who seem to be vying for the term itself here!

[http://etymonline.com/index.php?search=brand](http://etymonline.com/index.php?search=brand)

Circa 1400, the word, used as a verb, included the meaning of 'to stigmatize' and by 1600 included the meaning of 'mark property' and 'mark criminals' both as verbs; then as a noun, before the 1550's its meaning included being a piece of burning word, then 'mark made by hot iron' which expanded to 'a particular make of goods' ( which coincides to what I read in The Lean Brand, taking about the Golden Spike in 1869, where Gardner claimed the current use of the word Brand is still at that point, which you seem to sustain? ). Only in 1992 did it include the meaning "brand name" which is itself a sustainer of the 1869 usage also.

My point is, words change dramatically in meaning, especially considering circa 1400 the verb usage was the exact opposite of what we mean now, like many other English words have done over time. So in searching for a language and framework as a standard, the existing definition, or the loudest shouted definition doesn't necessarily answer what I need. If this were 1868 and we had never seen a train traveling across the continent, we wouldn't even need the existing definitions you listed -- so as we stand at 2014 at the threshold of Alibaba vs. Amazon, and The United States Digital Services, plenty of totally free services such as this one, Hacker News and Twitter where you joined from, there is quite possibly an entirely different context for the word now.

I didn't anticipate so much depth coming to my question so fast, otherwise I'd have mentioned that my personal situation as an innovator is the development of transmedia technologies, meaning that ( for perspective ) I come from a world where hackers in high school at the same time with me, are now 10 years later creating global organizations whose brands involve literal billions of individuals, and are valued at literal billions, whether created in their garage or in a skyscraper or bunker underground. There is another context for the word brand now, and if one or a few people began from the premise of influence as Beard seems to say, and as you seem to sustain, there would be a problem I feel, in my approach to the question: why would I need to persuade the entire world of something? Why would I want to? Wouldn't I want to work within a sub-set of that world, and invite that sub-set into my offering? I cannot and would not want to scale to the size of accommodating the planet, unless my brand itself is to provide something intangible or automatic. Even then, the relationship rather than the influence would be my focus, because as we see over and over with the Google complaints and a litany of others regarding privacy, influence is the exact thing being purged from the groundswell definition and usage of Brand. For me, until I read The Lean Brand, the word Brand was heading back to 'to stigmatize' in my feelings about it.

So with all that said, I am very curious to hear your reply to my musing on Medium linked above.

And from what I gather, Gardner is out of the country, and from what I've heard, his book is being released October 8th, so he probably will be hard to get, but Brant Cooper seems to be in the United States and might be available. I hope one or both of them can come address your thoughts and mine. Like Beard and Wilkins said, this is an extremely important topic, and I am so glad for your time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's true, defining what "branding" is can be all over the place. But the simple way to look at brand is it's the mix of identity(logo) and story(content). Your #1 job is to make the story clear and actively promote it. Over time you'll be able to train your audience to use this story to share with their network.

From a Lean POV(not sure that this aligns 100%) I have a couple notes for you on the structures I've used with previous clients. It's the simple path of hypothesis, test, iterate, optimize.

The end goal here is to gather real "data" in the form of your users'/target audience's own words to help clearly define a core brand story/positioning statement they can internalize and share with their networks.

Hypothesis: Company X is a (what/label) that (why/benefits) by (how/features).

I use this as a general guide to get the core keywords of the brand story.

Audience Testing: the goal is to test the hypothesis and answer two basic questions. 1) Is this compelling? Do people give a shit about this and would they buy it? 2) Is this clear? Do they quickly understand the statement and internalize it? Or do they have follow-up questions?

Data Sources: This is the footwork. Gather feedback on that statement to from random samples of your target demo on the street. Ask them to repeat it back? What words do they use? Do email surveys to your network and contacts, always include an opt-in at the end to note if they're okay with a follow-up call for more direct input. Phone calls/interviews, some paid FB ad testing. I say FB b/c it's generally been cheaper and quicker for feedback for me than AdWords.

Note: I try to record as much of this as possible, and have a partner to take notes if I'm on a call or interview. The unfiltered verbatim comments are what to use in your revisions.

Iterate: based on the data gathered, make revisions to the core statement and retest. I typically go 3-4 rounds before getting solid on something. Expect about 30-60 days to execute depending on your resources.

Core Brand Statement: once you've tested and finalized, you'll have a compelling and clear brand statement that effectively uses your audience's own words. It's time to actively work this into the balance of your marketing across your site content and other channels.

Don't just sit back now. Actively tell that story. Use it to share al your marketing, PR, brand-aligned partnerships, etc. And keep testing. New data sources will be A/B LP testing, content metrics, social engagement metrics, etc.

If you've got other questions, I'm happy to chat. Email is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your in-depth insights Sean! Followed you on Twitter, only to discover you are stalked by @FAKEGRIMLOCK, illustrator of The Lean Brand. No matter where I go, Jeremiah or The Lean Brand seems entrenched.

Your structure/formula is really valuable, I appreciate you sharing your personal way: Hypothesis, Audience Testing, Data Sources, Iteration / Perpetually Refined Core Statement. That seems to share a lot with The Lean Brand. Where that book goes further though, is into an Ecosystem of integrated aspects of organizations: Culture, Product, and Brand. Culture keeps together the Product and Brand inside the Organization, Product keeps the Culture and Brand ( externalized Organization ) relevant to the Audience, and Brand is the Organization and Audience relationship itself ( interestingly, including Vendors, Competitors, Employees, etc ). I'd be interested in your comments on The Lean Brand once it comes out, so I'd extend to you the same offer I made Bill -- if you'll do a write-up for HN, I'll gladly buy you the book to hear your opinions and learn from your experience.

Your formula/structure sounds very tried and true, but so far the only "standard" of any kind I've found has been The Lean Brand, including all aspects of internal and external thought, action, feelings, etc -- Let me know on Twitter, and I'll follow up with you on this.

By the way, impressive track record!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love that this discussion is happening. I think there are certainly more points we agree than disagree on. The entire concept of "lean branding" is such new territory, we should first think of ourselves as allies more than protecting our own dogmatic definitions, ideas or positions.

With that said…

IMO, customers absolutely think about brand as relationship. "I love Lululemon…I hate Toyota…I am an 'Apple guy.'" As Laura said, "your brand does not exist in isolation." This is very true.

We relate to organizations in the same way we do with people (which is where the whole 'corporate personhood' argument was generated). We have deep expectations, emotional connection, and preference about which organizations we choose to be in a relationship with, and which we choose to ignore or treat with ill-will (to Bill's point).

Branding shouldn't be about trying to influence that relationship through clever wordplay, coercion, or beautiful "symbols." These things are lie on the surface of a much bigger and more meaningful depth - the relationship. More to the point, it's not YOUR brand…it's shared.

The best copywriting, logo design, brand positioning statement, and so on are completely meaningless without a connection to an audience – which is the relationship.

Instead, branding should be about trying to build a relationship based on co- creation, co-participation, and co-value. Which is to say, that the point of "branding" is to discover the shared value (emotional impact, shared aspirations, shared journey).

Which is to Brant's point, "How do you discover and create a lean value stream that purposefully creates "satisfaction" from the product utility and "passion" from the emotional impact the entire organization delivers."

That's the key question. That's what any discussion about lean branding should address.

Shameless community plug: the community around The Lean Brand (which has been out for a while) is tackling these questions together with innovation, intelligence, and an incredible amount of enthusiasm.

</comment><comment><USER5> Regardless of how you define brand, most of us appear to agree that the world has changed and so branding itself needs re-branding. I think all the responses here address that with viable viewpoints. The mistake would be -- just as with implementing lean startup on the product side -- is to believe that there's a silver bullet or "one right way."

The key is to digest the principles and eventually 'make them your own', so that you develop products, services and yes, brand, that are true to your values and authentic.

There are a lot of variables at play here, not the least of which is, how "disruptive" is your startup endeavor? If you are truly disrupting a market or turning an existing market on its head, your methods around brand development differ versus re-segmenting [Steve Blank] an existing market, or merely re- branding an existing market, or creating new markets within the innovation efforts of existing large enterprises.

IMO, to think that a brand definition is owned by the consumer is as foolhardy as to think it's owned by the business. This is why it's a relationship: it's two sided; it encompasses both the promise of the product plus the emotional impact the customer hopes to achieve with her relationship to the organization.

This is pretty straightforward, actually. And, by the way, measurable. Customers don't share, endorse, show-off, or refer products they are satisfied with. And yet, products themselves most often can't achieve an emotional impact beyond 'satisfaction.' So what's the difference between brands that satisfy and those that generate passion?

This is what The Lean Brand tackles. How do you _discover_ and create a lean value stream that purposefully creates "satisfaction" from the product utility and "passion" from the emotional impact the entire organization delivers.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for including me on this. Thanks Adrian for the kind words. I think Adrian and I are in broad agreement as well.

I've spoken to Gardner, he's a good guy. But he and I have some fundamental differences in opinion. Admittedly, some of it is semantics, but when you're talking about branding, I think semantics are critical.

-To me, a brand is the emotional associations a customer has with a product/organization. Branding is our attempt to influence the customer into that desired emotional state. Hence, not really a relationship. (Adrian's point about a brand not being a logo, etc., is critical and something many people don't understand.)

-I hesitate to call a brand a relationship, because that's not how a customer thinks, or ever will think. It's our job to build that emotional association. Also, ultimately, the customer gets to decide what the brand is (if we drop the ball).

-To your point that started this thread, traditional branding processes don't work for lean orgs. Take too much time, too much money, don't provide any strategy or flexibility when encountering change (!), contain too many rules, limit your teams' ability to creatively solve problems in real-time. Loved adrian's point about the golf course.

Happy to chat offline (or a hangout, or whatever) about this. Also, I'm working on a short summary of my interpretation of Lean Branding, will share when it's done.

<comment><AUTHOR> WOW: Thanks for creating an account on HN to even reply to this thread :)

I'm excited to hear your opinions, probably even have a video conversation once you've read The Lean Brand, because to me it seems like semantic gaps are extremely unfortunate for not only businesses, but non-profit organizations that need this muddy water cleared to be able to aggregate their values.

On your points so far, having my copy of the book already, Jeremiah differentiates between Brand and Branding. Yes, there is the influence piece, but I wonder if there isn't a deeper priority difference and not only semantic. If you're in a relationship, don't you want the best for the other? And if your product is the best, don't you want your relationships to benefit from that? Seems more natural than "sales" or getting a customer to a desired state. In my view of influence, versus manipulation, there is a leadership aspect which is interested in the best of another, versus merely having an agenda.

So depending on your idea of relationship, or your priorities, I see the semantic gap not existing. Does that make sense for you? If your idea is creating value, emotional and functional, and you are passionate about sharing the best you know with everyone you know, influence falls away and branding remains. The Lean Brand as a framework has ways of diagnosing passion and amplifying it, which is what I was looking for. As an entrepreneur I want organic connections that deepen, and to create awareness, but not create connections per se. If people share my values, we're connected. And if I listen, like we do in relationships, I will know the values of my audience and might need to learn to value the same thing or just exile myself from that audience. If I don't meet the need naturally, I should axe my product and choose another problem to solve, not work harder to get my customer into a certain emotion about me.

I am excited to think more about this with you. Brand seems to be where so much is decided in the success of organizations. Seeing even the possibility of a FRAMEWORK for this nightmarish world of Brand changed my life as a visionary beyond any other change I've experienced literally in decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something to consider: I don't know much about about Laura, but I anticipate my perspective on the subject to be slightly different from those two books in that I worked as an ACD/Copywriter on LeanUX and Agile Dev teams in a startup, and was in charge of maintaing the brand. (We noticed early that the brand was going to suffer using Lean if we weren't careful.)

That's where we developed my version of Lean Branding, so I assume it's a little more in the trenches and focuses more on the day-to-day building and curation side, and (total assumption) may be more actionable. I think they both approach it from more of a strategy perspective.

(These are assumptions based on observations, and I'm not saying either perspective has more value, just that they're likely going to be different.)

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://zesty.io](http://zesty.io) and [http://bufferapp.com](http://bufferapp.com) both faced that too, in the book ( case studies ), and that is my biggest problem with Lean myself, as a developer/entrepreneur.

Your experience sounds relevant to my situation, so again, thanks for going down this road on HN for the good of Brand and us visionary types who need to really understand this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think there's a "standard" however you might want to poke at some or all of.

* The upcoming book on branding in the O'Reilly "Lean" series [http://www.leanbranding.com/](http://www.leanbranding.com/)

* Bill Beard has been doing some thinking / workshops about the topic. There are some links to his talks on [http://www.writebeard.com/](http://www.writebeard.com/)

* My session from Lean UX NYC last year [http://www.slideshare.net/adrianh/leanuxnyc-leanbranding](http://www.slideshare.net/adrianh/leanuxnyc-leanbranding) (probably doesn't make any sense without me rambling in front of it ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent links, thank you! I haven't heard of any of those. I will look into each.

The only one I've found myself so far is: [http://leanbrandbook.com/](http://leanbrandbook.com/)

That is also in the pre-order stage right now, so I ordered that since it does claim to have a framework and language.

Since you've spoken on Lean UX, I'm curious to know your impression of what Lean Branding could have over The Lean Brand.

Have you read an advanced reading copy of either book?

[ updated: ]

I wish your talk was available by video, yeah. I've gone through it though. Well done!

It seems like Lean Branding ( the book ) and your talk on Lean Branding seem to have a different definition of Brand than The Lean Brand and Bill Beard do ( only lightly reading through Beard so far ) ... the difference being Brand as Relationship and Brand as Identity.

But as I go through your talk, you seem to use a lot of the same terminology as The Lean Brand, and have the same core focus, compared to Lean Branding.

<comment><USER7> I've not had the time to poke at either of the books — so not competent to explain/judge differences ;-)

Bill and I talked about branding a bit after my talk last year and I _think_ we were in broad agreement — but his content background means he has a much better grasp of it at that end. Bill's a lovely chap (@writebeard on twitter) and will be happy to answer questions I'm sure. You might also find his video from this years Lean UX NYC of interest — but it's more on the content side [https://vimeo.com/94016584](https://vimeo.com/94016584)

I'm not really a "brand" person (I'm about 50/50 dev & UX) — my talk was really more about my experiences of what worked and didn't work rather than a manifesto or process. My broad points were:

* Busting the common misconception that "branding" was just about visual aspects (logo, style guide, etc.)

* That brand was an expression/aspect of product/market fit

* That rebranding is a kind of pivot.

* The large ad agency model of how to develop brands don't work with lean startup environments coz they're used to be being brought in to sell existing products where p/m fit is, to a large extent, already set. When it comes to p/m fit the Mad Men are on the green of the 18th hole. The branding folk for startups are still driving to the golf course and think they're playing cricket.

* That there are a whole bunch of folk in the branding/marketing world who have been saying smart things about the relationship between product, market and brand — and we should be making friends with them and paying attention.

* That bringing in branding/marketing folk early on makes sense and thinking of your brand as something that evolves and needs to be tested is a sensible approach.

Like I said though. I don't class myself as an expert on the brand stuff ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> The more I look into this, there seems to be a polarity between [http://jeremiahgardner.com](http://jeremiahgardner.com) and [http://laurabusche.com](http://laurabusche.com) when it comes to what Brand even is. It seems I'm becoming increasingly dependent on the language of The Lean Brand, so I want to be certain.

I stumbled onto [http://theleanbrand.com](http://theleanbrand.com) during it's crowd publishing pre-sale, which made the pre-order on Amazon possible. I was desperate to clarify Brand for my self, so I bought it. But it has turned everything on its head for me, like the Pivot you mention.

I was like a mole coming out of its hole into sunlight, hence this broader question on HN. I appreciate your insight into not only concepts but people in Brand. Your Agency Model comments and p/m/b fit comments read like sections of The Lean Brand, hence my curiosity on whether we can make a wider HN question of who is right between Laura and Jeremiah, since I am so new to this.

On Twitter I'll ask if you and Bill would do a comparison of The Lean Branding and Lean Branding for us on HN, if I bought you both the eBook to go through. Bill seems closer to Jeremiah than to Laura, but without a standard to offer beyond great observations.

After reading through what I have in The Lean Brand, specifically the Early Adopter copy and early-release of a Chapter before that, I can't understand how the issue of a standard for Brand, or even a sane way of using the word hasn't come around until now. I am wondering how people like you and Bill would approach it, with The Lean Brand in mind, since you seem to know about Lean Branding already ( at least enough to recommend it ) ... I'd value your perspective since I am 50/50 Coder & Entrepreneur myself.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shame on the EPO for its legal threats against TechRights author - <AUTHOR> http://www.fosspatents.com/2015/11/shame-on-european-patent-office-for-its.html <comment><AUTHOR> And part of what they uncovered was EPO favoring Microsoft and other large companies patents.</comment>


Ask HN's FPGA users: FPGA tool woes & wants? - <AUTHOR>

(From two guys building a webapp for FPGA users)
Any fellow FPGA users on HN? If you don't mind taking a moment to share your thoughts; it'll be really helpful!
We'd love to hear about: - what you dislike about existing FPGA tools - what you'd want in FPGA tools; and - whether we're building would be useful
Here's our take: 1) Dislikes: - Being forced to choose a specific FPGA before compilation(synthesis, place-and-route etc.) when I don't even know which FPGA suits my application. - Installing, maintaining, upgrading bulky software tools on local PCs. - Taking weeks/months to learn a particular tool from just one FPGA vendor. 2) Wants: - Ways to automatically match an FPGA app to the right FPGAs.
  - in terms of speed, size, power, etc. - FPGA tools hosted and updated somewhere else. - A single user interface that translates user inputs for all vendors' FPGA tools.
Existing tools don't seem to do these things, so we started building a webapp with the above features.
Ran the idea by the folks at YC and they had questions about how useful our webapp would be after the FPGA programming files are generated and the user needs to test on real hardware. (Answer: Not very; our webapp will just ensure that the user ends up buying and using the most suitable hardware)
Beta site: http://www.plunify.com
Thanks for reading; looking forward to your comments! <comment><USER2> Just having builds go way faster would be awesome. Shove some static analysis in there for warnings, and maybe collect user feedback to feed into a statistical model of the likelihood that the warning was indicative of an error. Take real advantage of being a webapp.

I think you should run far away from emphasizing the matching of a core to it's most cost-effective target -- it's not something you need to do until you actually have something nearing the need to buy a shitload of parts and ship. You generally develop on one of several overpowered dev boards that you already owned. Pitch the multi-hardware parallel build as _testing_ , not chip selection: 'what targets is my build not totally broken on'.

When I was doing some rather oddball FPGA development (trying to do Alan Kay style pedagogical CPU dev) I would have killed for this. I was attempting to build stuff with as little HDL as possible for clarity purposes, and would frequently fuck myself over when the Xilinx tools couldn't synthesize or place-and-route it anymore for my Spartan-3 hardware. Some of it was just their incompetence, where a hand-laid design could fit easily, but a lot of it was just classic traveling salesman problem woes. It would have been a lot easier to see what the real constraints I was hitting if I knew which chips it didn't work on anymore.

The vendor compiler toolchains are fucking dogshit. Just having that hosted and guaranteed not to collapse in on itself would be golden. You should also develop simple desktop software for flashing the builds for at least Linux and Mac OS X. At one point _I wrote my own flasher from scratch_ that sucked but Xilinx's Windows flasher had shat itself on me and I couldn't get it to work again (the Linux stuff never worked at all, ever). Make a simple drag-and-drop flasher. You could even sell a rebranded USB-JTAG that's guaranteed not to suck.

Simulators are ridiculously awful, but you're not going to come anywhere near fixing that.

"that the user ends up buying and using the most suitable hardware" is a side effect of some of your features, not the real use case you should be selling. It feels somewhat greasy, because at some level you're just marketing hardware to me. Even if you do try to monetize that through some kind of affiliate thing, don't put it up front. You'll spook the engineers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughts!

Yes, I think it's beautiful to try to apply software/computer science/statistical methods to a hardware field.

Making builds faster via parallelism, publishing statistics](http://www.plunify.com/reports.php>statistics); for an application and like you said, having some intelligent ways of indicating errors are things that we're very enthusiastic about. And it's great to read that people actually want such features.

Testing instead of chip selection? I guess I'm too used to the word "testing" being used for actual hardware testing, but I can see how the change in phrasing might appeal more.

I see; instead of greasy marketing talk, we should emphasize technical data in order to win over our target customers--the engineers. Being engineers ourselves, this makes complete sense. I wonder how we can appeal to the "suits" too.

How we're currently presenting results is something like this: Here're all the FPGAs that we've tested your application on. These are the ones who met your frequency, size, power, and this is how much they cost.

For simulators, we're trying to see if providing the open source Icarus Verilog and GHDL with custom libraries might work for people.

Can I ask you about that flasher that you wrote sometime? Not at all familiar with how they work, but a universal USB-JTAG solution would be great.

Really appreciate your comments.

<comment><USER2> Maybe use 'survey' or 'audit' instead of 'testing' to describe the mass builds. It's a continous integration system for a notoriously fiddly set of toolchains, and right now you're pitching it at the beancounter that selects the parts.

Send me an email about the flasher (see profile), I might be able to dig it out of an old home directory. Don't know if it still works, I only used it with one Utah on one dev board for a few months a couple years ago.

<comment><USER2> s/Utah/JTAG/ -- goddamn iPhone

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think being locked down to a specific FPGA is as big a deal as you think. In professional circles, FPGA choice is mostly a matter of your company being an Altera shop or a Xilinx shop, and which FPGA they've used in the past. For large customers, FPGA companies work quite closely with their customers so things like support and availability of parts at the quantity required means far more than exactly what features are in where. For many hobbyists, typically what matters is what peripherals ship with the cheapest dev kit as much as how many LUTs and memory blocks are on the chip.

But, on the flip side, some of the most annoying and agonizing decisions that you end up making over a lifecycle of a project is whether to upgrade to the newer / newest releases of various software. As you guys undoubtedly know, setting up these software is not trivial, and getting it to a point where a reasonable workflow exists can be pretty damn painful. And with every upgrade, you might get a nice compilation and synthesis speed upgrade coupled with a memory bug here and configuration but there. Something that some people might have a use for, is ability to target not just across different chips, but different versions of the software, not as a chip selection utility, but more as a tool selection utility might make a little more sense, where you provide fine control over exactly which version of tools are being used, as well as commonly used knobs for configuring the various parameters of place and route & synthesis options (of which there are plenty)

Even with that, though, I don't know if this is a service that a lot of people will find useful. As sybreon points out, IP cores are a huge part of FPGA development flow and I don't really see a way to easily handle that aspect of things. Many of the IP cores spit out encrypted HDL and I think pretty much every tool vendor has a different format that they can handle. Also, a lot of people are pretty tied to their simulator of choice, with libraries and custom TCL scripts to massage things just right, and I'd imagine it'd be difficult to move things like that over (though I did not go through the signup process to try things out myself).

I've been out of FPGA arena for couple of years now, but I think places to focus within the FPGA marketplace, especially in areas where people will pay real $$, is in testing and verification. Back in the days, many people used FPGA like they would a software compiler - try few lines of code, hit compile, check it out, rinse and repeat. With the increasing complexity of the designs due to ever increasing gate count, trying to develop like that doesn't work so well. If you could, for instance, take in a verilog or vhdl module, do some simple analysis to figure out input / output ports and the sensitivity list, and beat the crap out of it (using both user-defined data set and random / smart / fuzz sets), you might have something there...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm... seems true, for example, in Japan we found that inter-company relationships also matter a lot in FPGA decisions. Scalable support, alas, would be hard for a startup like us to provide.

We are working on adding dev kit details for hobbyists though. That's something which seems useful, like what you said.

So it seems like convenience rather than chip selection is something that we can possibly get people to pay for? Specifically the convenience of exploring different technical options in an automated design space exploration kind of fashion.

It seems like we have features that people might like, but we have to position it in ways different to what we currently believe would work?

Our webapp is pitching a minimalistic way of doing things, in that what the libraries and TCL scripts that you mentioned do, will be done automatically. Hopefully this will highlight the convenience factor more than the "change-in- working-methods" factor.

Testing and verification definitely is a big market. Figuring out the port and sensitivity list in Verilog/VHDL code doesn't seem hard, but coming up with good test vectors automatically sounds pretty daunting (and interesting).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The HORRIBLE point facing FPGA creation is the tools just don't tell you when you've accidentally made silly circuits.

There should be much better errors/warnings letting you know when you've written VHDL/Verilog that doesn't turn into standard logic gates and systems, when you've done things that have easy to identify race conditions, and when you've written things that just don't make sense.

After working with computer code compilers, and analyzers like lint and clang, it is still sad to look at the errors (and lack of errors) coming out of VHDL/Verilog tool chains and not see something even 2 orders of magnitude of useful as far as toolchain output. WAY too much Field application engineer time is spent on junior engineering problems that can't be effectively delegated due to this insufficient machine error checking.

I mean, half the time you generate something that will simulate differently than run in real life, that's OBVIOUS from the code structure. But no, the toolchain doesn't identify that, bench checking the specification to the VHDL is the only way to find that (or a code review by another engineer).

So TLDR: Make VHDL or Verilog spit out REAL errors and warnings when used somewhat incorrectly, or likely incorrectly. Bring the tools up to the standard of sequential coding tools, or even more in that direction instead of the morass it still is today for hardware specification languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oooo, an intelligent parser of FPGA code would be lovely. The parallel nature of hardware code presents very interesting challenges for such a parser, I think.

Recently I came across a company called www.sigasi.com that promised lovely things about VHDL development but I haven't really looked into them yet.

Existing FPGA tools spit out a LOT of warnings that are potentially helpful but are too verbose for anyone to remain sane trying to decipher all of them.

Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Avoid ever referring to it as code. There'll be a few cases where it's valid nomenclature, but most of the time it gets you headed in the wrong direction.

The trick would be a synthesis that preserves line-number metadata, and then a linting place-and-route that just creates idealized graphs and lets you see where your design is exploding or clocked funny or whatever.

<comment><USER4> >Avoid ever referring to it as code

I tend to call verilog or VHDL "VHDL Hardware Specification". Try to make it sound as un codelike as possible

After all VHDL was the way that military contractors came up with to specify their parts to the Govt in case they went belly up.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I was trained in Verilog and know little about VHDL, to be honest, I'm not quite sure why "code" is inappropriate.

But thinking about your(blasdel's and gte910h's) comments, I'm beginning to see how error-checking can and should be different for FPGA development.

<comment><USER2> Because neither Verilog nor VHDL is code. HDL is a slightly handwavey description of the graph of a machine, not something that runs on a machine.

You have wires, not variables: real physical wires connecting gates and LUTs. Since you're dealing with real-world electrical current, each wire can be in one of four binary states (null, low, high, grey). There's no concept of time beyond the speed of light itself unless you deliberately bind a clock line from the outside to a wire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With a web-app like this, I would be concerned about IP issues. Half the industry is banking on IP unless they are open-source like the OR1K. Otherwise, a proprietary house might be hesitant to upload HDL code even if it is over a secure SSL connection.

For simulation with Icarus Verilog, it might be possible to upload the compiled VVP binary. You can sell your computing power as a utility (ala cloud computing) and help people save cost from buying an expensive server and save time from having to wait days for results.

For FPGA selection, I personally doubt that your tool would be that useful because this decision is primarily dictated by the cost of parts - rather than the specific features. The hardware business is very cost-driven. What you can do is to provide customers with the ability to perform synthesis over multiple architectures for the purpose of 'testing' that their code works on them all.

<comment><AUTHOR> The IP issue is probably the top question from companies we talk to.

It may very well be the killer for this webapp, and we don't have a good technical solution at the moment. However much we encrypt, the customer's IP is going to sent to our Cloud anyway.

This reminds us of Dropbox in a way.

The non-technical "trust" factor seems to be very important here. Why would one trust a consultant or a design service company with one's IP? Because of a legally-binding contract and because of reputation / past interaction? That probably plays a big part.

Some strategies we came up with:

If users don't trust us with their most important IP, we'll ask for their not- so-important IP.

A support person probably has to meet the customer on a day-to-day basis, which would somewhat defeat the purpose of a webapp, at first.

Yes, we would be selling computing power in a sense. But we're also trying to do more to simplify working with FPGAs.

It's true that cost of parts is very important; that's why we're working on reporting chip cost and availability too. Octopart is very helpful in that respect!

Thanks for your comments!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a way to tackle the problem of IP vendors not wanting to upload their IP? The reason why we are online is that we can leverage on the cloud and make things run 5X, 10x or 20x faster and cheaper.

But will we ever get the IP vendors to trust us? We once thought about doing an 256bit AES client for them to encrypt their data before sending over. But after chewing on it, we felt that the problem is a perception issue. It is a matter of trust. It is like we use our credit cards online because we trust the payment merchants with our details. Will this problem eventually be eroded by time?

Oh btw, I am harnhua's cofounder. Thanks for all the wonderful views and insights.

</comment><comment><USER4> I know many companies wouldn't allow your tool to be used for IP related concerns. Perhaps you should make your tool into a downloadable service?

<comment><AUTHOR> Would that diminish the value of our service if it only runs on companies' internal servers and not enjoy benefits in parallelism that we can give them?

I guess if they are too worried about IP, offering the downloadable service is perhaps the best alternative.

<comment><USER4> Another alternative is running in a VMWare virtual machine for them, or allowing them to upload it themselves to cloud providers.

<comment><USER4> Has hacker news not heard of Virtual Machine Appliances?

<http://www.vmware.com/appliances/>

You can buy VM Images that do all sorts of things with no configuration whatsoever. Multiple VMWare images running on customer hardware is an alternative solution for this company if they're trying to sell to people like Cisco and AT&T etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have only done a small amount of FPGA programming, so my comments may not be that useful.

I have only ever used a Xilinx FPGA or CPLD, so seeing how an app would compare on different FPGA's would be interesting, although for the apps that I have developed it probably wouldn't matter that much.

I do agree that the current suits are often bulky and take a long time to learn.

My comments may not be that useful, but I love seeing any thing that is related to embedded programming on HN. Great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> That was pretty helpful - thanks!

When you mentioned that it probably wouldn't matter too much for the apps that you developed, did you mean that they were too small/slow/<something> for you to care?

Thanks for the encouragement. It's great fun shifting a traditionally desktop- bound and kinda conservative application onto the web, and sort of distilling the bare minimum features required to make it work.

<comment><USER7> The apps that I have developed were so small and the requirements for the projects did not require it to be fast. I hope to do a few more projects down the road where speed will be an issue, but that is a ways away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're targeting professional engineers, I'd worry that A. They could figure out the answer to these questions on their own, or if not, B. one of the large distribution companies would only be too happy to send out a sales engineer to assist with the decision making process.

Are you targeting the hobbyist market? I'm not sure how much money they might have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comments.

Some thoughts in response to your comments:

> professional engineers > A. They could figure out the answer to these > questions on their own. [harnhua] True - what they would gain by using our > webapp is convenience and automated testing/evaluation.

> B. one of the large distribution companies would only be too happy to send > out a sales engineer to assist with the decision making process. [harnhua] > Probably only if one is buying enough FPGAs/CPLDs to pay for that sales > engineer? I reckon there should be many small-/medium-volume projects > staffed by professional engineers who wouldn't attract such a level of > customer service from the distributors. Sales engineers who're skilled in > FPGAs are probably in short supply.

> hobbyist market [harnhua] Although there's little money there, we'd really > like to make FPGAs easier to use for students and hobbyists as well.

Any thoughts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cannot sign up. It says "Please tick on the checkbox below to agree to the terms and conditions. Thank you." even if I click it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. That has been fixed.

Thanks for stopping by!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd like tools for OSX.

<comment><USER11> Shouldn't OSX run most tools written for unix/linux?

<comment><AUTHOR> Before I started working on this webapp, I tried running the FPGA tools on Mac OS X without much success. That was in the days of PowerPC Macs though.

Getting the necessary libraries to play nicely was a great pain.

After Virtualbox came out, running FPGA tools on my Mac became possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First thing I wanted to click: the pretty color bar picture (<http://www.plunify.com/images/plunify_graph.gif> ); needs to link to a bigger version.

Also, if you're using Flash for static charts, I'd suggest replacing with pictures (no Flash player, nothing to see in <http://www.plunify.com/reports.php> )

[clicky for the site: <http://www.plunify.com/>]

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that picture has been updated with a link to the sample report page.

Are you accessing it from an iPhone by any chance? ;)

<comment><USER12> I'm just one of those eccentrics who think there's no Flash player like no Flash player ;-)

But you made me interested enough to go fire up the page in another machine/browser with Flash. Hmm ... spring-loaded animated charts ... in the 'Logic utilization' tab, there seems to be a mismatch between the full-scale outline at the bottom and the section viewed.

I tried AOL's webpage tester (<http://www.webpagetest.org/result/100602_4TE/> ), to see how big was the Flash blob, but it timed out the first time.

A few other observations: you may want to add a line explaining how many (equivalent) k-gates are in the sample design, and how long it took to get the results (at the 1X speed ?).

Also, you may want to consider beefing up the 'How secure' answer in your FAQ. Guaranteed to come up.

VNC session for GTKwave ? I think I saw some mention of VNC-in-browser recently ...

Sign-up/sign-in worked OK. Thanks.

P.S. Forgive me, I'm sure you put a lot of work on those charts, but I would really suggest exporting reports to a boring Open Office spreadsheet that people could download, manipulate at will and print (or even view with Google Docs or similar, if they're in all-web-all-the-time mode).

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries, please criticize as much as you like--that's how we can improve.

In fact, you've already convinced us to do the spreadsheet export thing. I see your point there.

The Flash blob :) has a maximum width/height of 2880 pixels, I read.

Thanks again--we'll fix the charting bug and add the gatecount and runtime information.

The VNC interface is a stop-gap that we're trying desperately to get rid of. It's just too slow. Anything that requires installation is avoided as much as possible. (Except for Flash, unfortunately :) )

A recent HN post talked about Smokescreen, an open source Javascript/HTML5 that sounded interesting. Doesn't seem to be ready yet though.

Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Finally telling the truth about our startup to customers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pmrobot.com/2013/04/truth-about-pmrobot-project-management-app.html

<comment><USER2> Love it, love it to death! There is so much truth in this article, on both a meta level and the obvious level. In fact, you have inspired me to write a similar post for Fogbeam Labs.

I sometimes feel torn when writing about us, on our blog, our website, etc... trying to choose between "generic corporate voice" where we try to sound like a typical "big company" and something more "down to earth, folksy and honest". And, truth be told, I think I sometimes default to "generic big company" because it's actually _easier_ in some perverse sense. Figuring out how to write simply, directly, and honestly, while preserving the underlying message and not sending a different message, is - IMO - a non-trivial thing.

We want potential customers to know that we're a small company (2 people at the moment), that our products are unfinished, immature and buggy, and that we can't provide some of the things that IBM or Oracle can. But we also don't want them to think that we're a bunch of rubes who don't know what we're doing, or to think that we'll do anything less than bend over backwards to provide the best possible support to those who take a chance on us at this early stage. We also want people to know that we genuinely believe that we have what will be the best product offerings in our space, as things mature and we finish fleshing things out.

It's a tough balance to strike, but this post has me thinking about really trying a different tack on this.</comment>


Things HN Says - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/things_hn_says

<comment><USER2> So, is this automated in some way or is it done by hand?</comment>


Show HN: APItest – A command line web API testing tool - <AUTHOR> http://dendory.net/?d=53ec1854

<comment><AUTHOR> As an example of how easy to use it is, try this:

> apitest -host news.ycombinator.com -res /rss -format xml -parse title</comment>


George Soros: Remove Zuckerberg and Sandberg from Their Posts - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/88f6875a-519d-11ea-90ad-25e377c0ee1f <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/0zfTk](http://archive.is/0zfTk)</comment>


Hacker 'made plane climb' after taking control through in-flight system - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11611058/Cybersecurity-researcher-made-plane-climb-after-hacking-in-flight-entertainment-system.html

<comment><USER2> If that were possible, it would be indicative of a pretty big error in design.</comment>


Cedars-Sinai puts Amazon Alexa in patient rooms as part of a pilot program - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/25/cedars-sinai-puts-amazon-alexa-in-patient-rooms-as-part-of-a-pilot-program/ <comment><USER2> Spying devices in our hospitals and medical centers is exactly what we need... Woohooo!!!

 _wtf_</comment>


Publishers Chafe at Apple's Terms for Subscription News Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/publishers-chafe-at-apples-terms-for-subscription-news-service-11549998416 <comment><USER2> Read without paywall: [https://outline.com/Wj3fTS](https://outline.com/Wj3fTS)</comment>


AWS S3 leaks data from Fortune 100 firms - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/aws-s3-server-leaks-data-from-fortune-100-companies-ford-netflix-td-bank/ <comment><USER2> The title suggests that s3 itself was leaking objects outside of its design and intended controls.

A real leak would be Bucket with same name leaked objects from other same names bucket... letting a customer get another customers data.

I don't see why s3 is anywhere in the article. It's distracting and hints that someone the people in charge of this sensitive data should be off the hook for poor data stewardship.

Maybe title should be "Provider left cloud object store unsecured and someone noticed. "

</comment><comment><USER3> Attunity leaks data via S3. The title makes it sound like AWS is the one leaking data.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, if you put private data in your bucket and make the bucket public, that's what will happen.

A more accurate title is that this firm leaked the data, not S3 itself.</comment>


How to Raise a Successful VC Round or Series A - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2011/03/tactics-for-how-to-raise-vc-round-or.html

<comment><USER2> Lots of nice tactics in this, but a key assumption of the article: you have the knowledge of your market and the product that demonstrates your knowledge of the market so that you have a sense of confidence in your pitch and in your company's future.

The above probably sounds silly... until you've been in or seen pitches in which the folks pitching it don't have that confidence. The classic trap is building the pitch on good ideas and being smart about them. You can just about smell that pitch and it doesn't smell nice. Great pitches are ones where the audience starts thinking about how to _accelerate_ a great product/market (introductions, additional markets, tactics, etc), not about how to _validate_ it (search for comps, call around to colleagues, etc).

But YouTube wasn't making any $$$ when they got acquired! Those kids definitely had it: obviously growing and _inevitable_ market in which they had huge adoption, huge growth, dominance. Questions after the pitch: How much do you need to crank this thing up? What kinds of introductions can we make? When would you like to start discussing acquirers? And, most importantly, where do we sign?

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool post, but I have a question:

How do you actually get a meeting in the first place? (and how hard is it?)

I'm applying to YC this week. If I don't get in, maybe I'll try hitting up some VCs or angels. Do I need to _know someone who knows someone_?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is usually best. Some people you can also just reach out to directly, e.g. on Quora. Or you can go to an event and talk to e.g. a panelist, and then follow up afterwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great overview post. A really useful, related post might be what goes into a VC pitch and examples of great ones and some not so great ones (just as a reference).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - that is actually my next post which is queued to go :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does this play with VC's coming into the Super Angel space?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a pretty different dynamic and more similar to an angel round, given all the competition from angels for the same investment. The key is, once you get to Series A, the universe of potential financiers collapses down to the venture community.

<comment><USER6> Hey Elad, thanks for all the advice. Can you write the same post, but geared for someone at the stage just before that? i.e. going from $0 to seed round.</comment></comment></comment>


Have you abandoned your desktop computer? - <AUTHOR>

From Steve Jobs: "The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That's over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade."
Mobile devices have grown powerful enough in the last years to replace desktop machines at most tasks. So do you still find value of keeping around, upgrading or buying new desktop machines?
As an aside, have you delved into overclocking or case modding? <comment><USER2> I stopped using a desktop about a year and a half ago as my main development machine. MacBook Pro 15" is my main development workstation now. When I work at my desk I plug it in to a keyboard, mouse, external monitor and ethernet. The only thing I miss is SSD, but really, not that much.

All the "non mobile" computers I use are either racked servers or a fleet of Mac Mini's I use for a build farm.

Now that I have a laptop that's on par with desktop performance needed for day to day development, I can finally stop the pain of syncing multiple machines. It's nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't quite cut the cord; so I have an MBA and a big iMac at work. But I can see the not-too-distant future when a laptop will be sufficient, especially as I no longer write much CPU intensive video software.

I also practice "disposable computing"; I change hardware every six months or so (the older machines trickle down to friends and family), so the overhead in changing is pretty minimal. For as much as I bitch about Apple, they make this very easy (unsurprisingly, upon refection, as they love them their 40% gross margins on hardware.)

</comment><comment><USER4> 10 years ago, I never thought I could be without a desktop and it was laughable that I'd even consider going laptop-only.

Yet, even for HD video editing now, laptops seem to hold their own. I'm starting on a documentary soon and I'll likely do most of my HD editing on a Mac Pro, but I could get by on just a laptop if I needed to.

I have a desktop around for gaming and testing Windows software. That's about it.

</comment><comment><USER5> The vast majority of my development work can be done on an incredibly lightweight netbook with a 10.5" screen and 2gb RAM, with a battery that lasts 10 hours so I can just plug it in at night. Why would I chain myself to a desktop? Only when working with very large sets of data do I switch to something more powerful, and even then usually a larger laptop will do.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm just using my laptop at this point. I think it has a lot to do with what is convention. Why should I be using the slightly more powerful computer given that my laptop can travel with me?

</comment><comment><USER7> I haven't owned a desktop machine since 2001. My last box was an 800MHz AMD Duron.</comment>


The Unfinished PDE Coffee Table Book - <AUTHOR> http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/pdectb.html <comment><USER2> On the off chance that the authors read this: please, since you have no current plans to finish the project, make the document source code available (I'd guess it's LaTeX, but there's more effort put into layout than usual) and release it under an open license. For something like this (where the document would be very difficult to reproduce without the source file), the GNU Free Documentation License[0] is probably appropriate since it will force anyone redistributing the book to make the source available too.

You might even find people willing to maintain/add to the project (I'd offer to help, but am in no way qualified to maintain a book on PDE).

[0]: www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

<comment><USER3> The best way to get the author to read your comment might be to email him using the address on the very page!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the push; done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those who want it in a single file (40MB zipped):

[http://www.sendspace.com/file/5sns0f](http://www.sendspace.com/file/5sns0f)

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome! I would totally buy this book.</comment>


Show HN: Test your Ruby Blocks knowledge with this quiz we built - <AUTHOR> http://rubyquiz.bottega8.com/

<comment><USER2> Some of your questions are wrong:

        irb(main):001:0> data = [1,2]
        => [1, 2]
        irb(main):002:0> total = 10
        => 10
        irb(main):003:0> data.each { |x| total += x }
        => [1, 2]
        irb(main):004:0> puts total
        13
        => nil

===

        What is proper syntax for a block?

        A.  { |x| puts x }
        B.  do |x| puts x end
        C.  ->(x) { puts x}
        D.  A & B
        E.  B & C
        F.  A & C

I answered A & B which your quiz says is wrong.

You might want to read this and rewrite your quiz...

[http://awaxman11.github.io/blog/2013/08/05/what-is-the- diffe...](http://awaxman11.github.io/blog/2013/08/05/what-is-the-difference- between-a-block/)</comment>


Show HN: Easy State: Simple, Balanced State Management for React with ES6 Proxies - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/solkimicreb/react-easy-state <comment><AUTHOR> Easy State provides a healthy balance of local and global state management in a simple, scalable way. It consists of two functions only with no hidden complexities. Please give it a try if you have 5 minutes to spare (:</comment>


Syntax control for the command line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stephencelis/syn

<comment><USER2> Before people get up in arms about iA patents, see this tweet where they announced that they're dropping their patents pending: [https://twitter.com/iA/statuses/416393539182796800](https://twitter.com/iA/statuses/416393539182796800)

That aside, this is pretty cool. I'm not sure if I'd ever use it, but it would be cool to see a vim plugin that offers similar functionality.

<comment><USER3> Here's the discussion with DHH that led to this decision:

[http://storify.com/nthnclrk/conversation-with-dhh-ia-and- ste...](http://storify.com/nthnclrk/conversation-with-dhh-ia-and-stevieness)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6966528](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6966528). This is pretty much the best response I can imagine.

</comment><comment><USER5> Couple of `git` points: why are you committing binaries to your master branch? Personally, I also won't be moving anything from a random git repo into /usr/local/bin...

<comment><USER6> For those that are worried, the source is there to inspect and compile. For those that aren't, there's reduced friction. It's a young project and I could move the binary elsewhere, but I'm not sure that would change your concern?

Is there an alternate process you would suggest?

<comment><USER7> I believe GP was saying two separate things. First of all, it's unusual to commit binaries to source control, because they can't be merged, etc. Second of all, he personally isn't comfortable with binaries and would rather compile from source.

It'd be more traditional to release binaries separately, maybe using the following: [https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your- software](https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-software)

<comment><USER6> Ah, I'd missed that update. Thanks! I prefer this to the current workflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's _natural language_ syntax, BTW. And just part-of-speech tag info at that, not full-on syntax-tree-aware stuff. Still, cool. Didn't know OS X had that stuff built-in.

</comment><comment><USER9> What's the point here? Is this a demonstration of prior art? Or is it just demonstrating that a patent's technology is easily re-implemented?

Because if it's the latter, that doesn't really prove anything. Patents are to protect technologies/inventions that are far easier to produce after invention than before. That's the _good_ part of a patent, when the patent system works as designed.

If it's a demonstration of prior art though, that's pretty cool - it might help to make it more obvious, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's neither prior art (though it was started prior to the recent patent publicity), nor a re-implementation (as stated in the readme, it's just a wrapper around OS X's NSLinguisticTagger).

Why can't it just be a useful tool? I'm looking forward to using it while writing project documentation and will be working on editor plugins using the JSON formatted output ([https://github.com/stephencelis/syn/commit/d2d36473f7295c6cf...](https://github.com/stephencelis/syn/commit/d2d36473f7295c6cfb220f4e322c6b7b2ca798fe)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> OSX has built-in NLP tools? I tried doing a google search for it, but I can't find any documentation. Do any of you know anything about it?

<comment><USER11> Tools, as in command line tools, I'm not so sure about. But Cocoa has NSLinguisticTagger. Good overviews:

[http://www.objc.io/issue-7/linguistic- tagging.html](http://www.objc.io/issue-7/linguistic-tagging.html) [http://nshipster.com/nslinguistictagger/](http://nshipster.com/nslinguistictagger/)

And SDK documentation:

[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/cocoa/...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/cocoa/reference/NSLinguisticTagger_Class/Reference/Reference.html)

<comment><USER10> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I find some time I may write a plugin for Sublime Text :)

<comment><AUTHOR> The OP is working on a nicer machine-readable output for exactly this purpose, though I think he's hoping for a Vim plugin.

I'm also be wanting a Sublime plugin, preferably one that can cycle the selection through tagged words and allow editing. I started hacking one out last night, but got stuck on the complexity of the plugin architecture. I'll update this if I ever get something working.</comment></comment>


Adblock Plus Is "Unethical" and "Immoral", Says IAB Chief - <AUTHOR> http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/adblock-plus-is-unethical-and-immoral-says-iab-chief/ <comment><USER2> I am so off-the-charts sick and tired of advertisers and "content" producers that feel entitled to dictate what I can and can't choose to see on my device.

In their hubris they have decreed that anyone who doesn't want to waste bandwidth downloading their ads is a thief, again because they feel entitled to turn a profit seemingly just because they exist.

The simple fact is that not everything on the web deserves to make money. A massive, massive amount of Internet content is simply inane drivel. If we were to see a great die-off of content producers due to lack of ad revenue I'm not convinced that the internet wouldn't be better off. Advertising is, after all, the business of manipulating me into buying something that I don't want to buy. Frankly I find that and the people who do it to be reprehensible.

<comment><USER3> As a counterpoint, I find it rather ironic that a lot of the things people complain about being "inane drivel" yet continue to consume every day. "This is shite, it doesn't deserve to make money" "So, why do you keep reading it?"

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Someone has to be keeping this inane drivel alive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's also unethical to track visitors without their consent but no one in the advertising industry seems to care asking for permission. They profile us, we block their ads. Simple as that.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's simply wrong to assume people would gladly want to be exposed to ads in general. The only unethical thing here is to call people unethical who simply decide not to participate in ad viewing.</comment>


What happened to the Tupac hologram technology? - <AUTHOR> It came out of nowhere. Was mindblowing. I would've thought that it would have permeated everything by now. Yet it seems to have vanished. <comment><USER2> [http://gizmodo.com/5902625/tupac-hologram-wasnt-a- hologram](http://gizmodo.com/5902625/tupac-hologram-wasnt-a-hologram)</comment>


Backdoor Found in Lenovo RackSwitch and BladeCenter - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/lenovo-discovers-and-removes-backdoor-in-networking-switches/ <comment><USER2> Who wants to guess requested this backdoor be added?

A source code revision history audit revealed that this authentication bypass mechanism was added in 2004 when ENOS was owned by Nortel's Blade Server Switch Business Unit (BSSBU). The mechanism was authorized by Nortel and added at the request of a BSSBU OEM customer. Nortel spun BSSBU off in 2006 to form BLADE Network Technologies (BNT). BNT was purchased by IBM in 2010, and, subsequently, Lenovo in 2014.

<comment><USER3> > Who wants to guess requested this backdoor be added?

It could actually have been added by malicious hackers.. Wikipedia entry[0] reads like Nortel didn't really care about having had their systems completely breached for a _decade_ , nor did they disclose that to any (prospective) buyers of the company.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nortel#Hackers_had_free_access...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nortel#Hackers_had_free_access_for_years_without_being_detected)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reads as similar problem as [https://www.exploit- db.com/exploits/14875/](https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/14875/) (which impacts certain Dell switches)

What is somewhat relevant is that for most of these Accton switches exploiting this vulnerability is the only way to perform factory reset of switch that you don't know password for that does not involve paid out-of-warranty service. To some extent I'm able to believe that this money-grab is the reason for existence of the whole backdoor, only the manager who had this brilliant bussines idea didn't expect that the password generator would get reverse engineered.

<comment><USER5> What I don't get is: why not do it like HP? With some of their switch gear, you can connect ports 1/2 via cable during powerup to trigger a reset, proving ultimate control over the physical device. Other HP gear I use has a "clear config" pinhole which together with the "reset" pinhole can be used to wipe the password, the config or both.

Also, I remember that some years ago I read a story about a sysadmin who locked down all networking equipment and some of it could actually not be resetted and had to be a) serviced and b) completely reconfigured, leading to significant cost...

<comment><USER4> Because you cannot collect money each time customer presses physical button (or flips bit in confreg, which is cisco way of doing the same)

Best solution I've seen from the practicality standpoint is distinct "clear password" button on HP ProCurves that you mention which works without power cycling the switch (and thus downtime). Looping ports 1 and 2 which is used by typical non-Accton chinese OEM switches seems like giant hack to me (which can even happen by accident given right environment)

<comment><USER5> > Best solution I've seen from the practicality standpoint is distinct "clear > password" button on HP ProCurves that you mention which works without power > cycling the switch (and thus downtime).

No downtime == not detectable by monitoring. Port looping by accident is not a problem - when it occurs during operation the network grinds to a halt _very_ quickly after the deed and the hellfire of flashing LEDs should show any operator what is going on, and when it happens during power-up by accident something has gone very wrong...

<comment><USER6> It is definitely detectable by monitoring.

And it can also be disabled, proliant servers also have or had since I didn't handled them for years a password bypass button for ILO/IPMI it and it was a god send in some cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the CVE:

[https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-3765](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-3765)

And this is Lenovo's page on the issue:

[https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/len-16095](https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/len-16095)

</comment><comment><USER8> _> The existence of mechanisms that bypass authentication or authorization are unacceptable to Lenovo and do not follow Lenovo product security or industry practices_

What about their own installation of spyware like Superfish[1] or even harder to remove UEFI malware[2]? Apparently they are OK with doing it, when they do it themselves.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_incident)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870)

<comment><USER9> Not really sure why people are downvoting without providing their side of the argument. Your point is valid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In my probably uneducated opinion, this sounds less like a backdoor, and more like a bug.

<comment><USER11> I disagree, that definitely sounds like something that could have been added. It is very probable whoever had the joy of holding the legacy code support bag after all the transitions had no idea this existed in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Will Lenovo always have the shadow of the Chinese government looming over it? Is there a point in the future when the two might be disconnected?

<comment><USER11> Nothing about this has anything to do with the Chinese government specifically. This was introduced by Nortel, then perpetuated by IBM, then eventually discovered by Lenovo.</comment></comment>


GPL Compliance and Licensing: More background about the Cisco case - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/2008-12-cisco-complaint <comment><USER2> A bridge too far, I fear. I've read the complaint and it appears that Cisco/Linksys has been unhelpful & lazy about compliance. But one of FSF's demands is silly and the other is kind of scary and I can understand why Cisco is kicking.

Silly: The demand that Cisco contact all owners of infringing products over the last 5 years is ridiculous. I have one of the WRT45G routers I bought with cash 4 years and 2,000 miles away. If these things were _giving people cancer_ they still couldn't find me.

Scary: _"Linksys shall compensate FSF ... for its past distribution of FSF programs in a manner that did not comply with the applicable free software license."_

What's the going rate for infringement? $150,000 per copy or something?

<comment><USER3> "What's the going rate for infringement? $150,000 per copy or something?"

There is a range for statutory damages from $750 - $30000 per WORK (not per copy).

There is no reason to believe that the FSF would be awarded anything more than the minimum since they have not suffered any economic damage from the infringement.

<comment><USER2> Ah! Good catch, thank you. That is a huge difference.

So they are demanding about a million cash maximum, plus a dedicated compliance officer, plus a recall-like effort to notify millions of customers about a "defect" that few will care about or understand -- in effect, subsidizing FSF's educational and advocacy efforts.

Hmm. This seems a little more reasonable but I still think this is a big risk on the part of the FSF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> as time goes gnu/gpl/fsf looks like a license troll to me

</comment><comment><USER5> So... anybody hear Cisco's side of this story yet?

Apparently, they weren't quite denying access to the source code outright but placed it on their website (where 1 hn commenter managed to find it, presumably, not after that much time). What about those requests the FSF claims went unheard?

Seriously, if not the lawsuit, at least the demands leveled against Cisco are ludicrous.</comment>


Iowa lawmaker proposes bill punishing schools coddling anti-Trump students - <AUTHOR> http://www.theblaze.com/news/2016/11/12/suck-it-up-buttercup-iowa-lawmaker-proposes-bill-punishing-schools-coddling-anti-trump-students/ <comment><USER2> Okay, so I disagree with punishing such schools, but I do think it's ridiculous that anyone is coddled for Trump winning the election. It seems like our society is becoming dangerously prone to coddling people for anything uncomfortable, scary, or worrying. Life is hard. Life is often disappointing. Scary stuff often happens in life. We don't need coddling, we need to be told we can handle whatever comes our way. We need to change our paradigm to one of expecting strength and resilience, and drop this ideology which celebrates weakness and frailty.

How can kids who are coddled in school be expected to deal with the harsh realities of grown-up life afterwards?

</comment><comment><USER3> > The state would then penalize those schools by cutting triple the amount of > money wasted from the 2017 budget.

Budget cuts to public high schools—money that's used to pay for the staff and resources needed to actually teach kids, by schools which often don't have much budget to go around in the first place—as a form of punishment, because lawmakers disagree with administrators' decisions. And somehow the _students_ are the childish ones?</comment>


Mac OS X Malware Builds Botnet More than 550,000 Strong  - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/mac-os-x-malware-builds-botnet-more-550000-strong

<comment><USER2> One russian security firm that makes money selling OSX antivirus software has made this claim without producing any evidence or even explaining how the estimate was produced.</comment>


Show HN: Libquiet – transmit data using sound - brian-armstrong http://brian-armstrong.github.io/quiet/ <comment><AUTHOR> Magic !

You can broadcast data without a network.

Edit: I actually prefer this to the clumsy QR code scanning, maybe I'll use it for device pairing. Would also be a great tool to pair devices which don't have a display.

But the sounds produced remind me of the background noise in a forest.

Which makes me think that maybe if you used this lib to listen to the noises in a forest and then try and look for interesting patterns in that data..

Anyway, cool lib, will bookmark it.

<comment> brian-armstrong Yeah! I was thinking the same thing -- this could work quite well for pairing.

Thanks for the kind words :)

<comment><USER2> That would be an interesting application. What could the range be?

<comment><USER3> Google uses sound for pairing - seems to work okay in reasonably sized room with all kinds of surfaces [https://gigaom.com/2014/06/26/chromecast-will-use- ultrasonic...](https://gigaom.com/2014/06/26/chromecast-will-use-ultrasonic- sounds-to-pair-your-tv-with-your-friends-phones/)

<comment><USER2> Wow, so cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this looks like a much better version of something we attempted for a hackathon [1]. I'm probably going to spend the weekend spelunking through this!

Is there a more detailed write up of the inner workings floating around?

[1] [https://github.com/rraval/pied-piper](https://github.com/rraval/pied- piper)

<comment> brian-armstrong As a starting point, I'd suggest reading the profiles, which provide all the configuration [https://github.com/brian- armstrong/quiet/blob/master/quiet-p...](https://github.com/brian- armstrong/quiet/blob/master/quiet-profiles.json)

Quiet's design is typical for what you'd find in a textbook diagram of a modem. It uses liquid SDR to generate the modulated symbols, and then it runs them through an interpolation filter and mixes them up to some carrier frequency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Q1: Do you have some BER versus SNR measurements, especially for the speaker->mic path through air?

Q2: For ultrasonic: Most cheap ultrasonic transducers are very narrow band around 40KHz. Are there barriers to moving the carrier frequency up to that range?

Q3: After a very quick look at the doc, I didn't see what kind of encoding scheme you are using?

<comment> brian-armstrong I don't have actual numbers. That'd be a very good thing to check. It uses convolutional codes and viterbi decoding which helps reception and decoding considerably.

I suppose I should really call it nearly ultrasonic. Since I've only been able to play with standard sound hardware, and this hardware always has a low-pass filter that cuts off around 20kHz, that's the absolute highest frequency I've been able to test. When I say 44.1kHz I just mean the sampling frequency -- perhaps I should have been clearer about that, sorry :)

The modulation scheme for the air path is GMSK. For cable transmission, it's OFDM + QAM1024.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> this is pretty awesome. something similar to this is being used by Silver Push to unify devices to the same owner: [http://blog.silverpush.com/silverpush- says-its-using-audio-b...](http://blog.silverpush.com/silverpush-says-its- using-audio-beacons-for-an-unusual-approach-to-cross-device-ad-targeting/)

i'm not a fan of this kind of covert ad tech but i feel that this trend won't be slowing down any time soon...

</comment><comment><USER7> I love the way people can still use old connection ports (jack for instance) to find new usages.

Made me think about Google Tone : [http://googleresearch.blogspot.fr/2015/05/tone- experimental-...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.fr/2015/05/tone-experimental- chrome-extension-for.html)

Also made me think about the iPod nano, it only had a single jack port. It was used to charge it and also to transmit data.

<comment><USER8> I still have one of the buttonless iPod Shuffles ([http://www.macworld.com/article/1139333/iPod_shuffle_design....](http://www.macworld.com/article/1139333/iPod_shuffle_design.html)). I used it regularly for the gym up until I fully switched to streaming services. I still feel it's one of the most zen products Apple has made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pretty cool. The issue with ultra sonic transmission is attenuation destroys the signal.

</comment><comment> brian-armstrong If anyone tried quiet_encode_soundcard and found it glitchy, I'm terribly sorry! I was writing the wrong number of samples to Pa_WriteStream. That bug has been fixed and the fix pushed to master.

It looks like there may also be a bug with the receivers being garbage collected in Firefox in the JS text demo. I'm looking at that now.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pretty cool library you've put together. Do you plan to build apps or a company on top of it in the future?

Audible transmission worked successfully for me in Chrome but inaudible didn't. Inaudible can get pretty complicated to do robustly because of compression and filtering, as you've mentioned in other comments.

My startup (LISNR) is a content and engagement platform entirely on top of "ultrasonic" audio tones. We started in 2012 and still feel audio transmission tech doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. Especially in use cases where bluetooth beacons have failed to catch on.

<comment> brian-armstrong Thanks for the feedback. I've generally had good luck in getting the inaudible mode working in desktop Chrome, but I think it needs more tuning to become truly robust.

I don't know that I really plan to do much beyond working on the library. When I started out, I was actually just interested in seeing what sort of bitrate I could achieve on an audio cable but decided to also support air transmission when I realized how similar it would be. I would definitely love to see it get embedded into iOS and Android apps though.

Good luck with your endeavor! Audio data transmission might be "budget tech" but I think it certainly gets the job done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the bitrate and range one can achieve with this? What could be the advantage beyond those of bluetooth (low power) or wifi (range)? What could be applications of this?

<comment> brian-armstrong The bitrates I've found so far are roughly 40 kbps for cable-based transmission and ~300bps for air transmissions. It should be possible to get even better speeds with more tuning of quiet's profiles. In empirical testing, I've found the air transmissions have a range of a few meters, but it really depends on how the speaker is oriented with respect to the microphone.

As for the advantages, of course traditional radio-based transmissions have many advantages. Quiet has a few though -- for example, with its javascript bindings, you can use quiet to share data between native apps and the browser. You might do this to share what's in your clipboard, share contact info with someone, pair devices etc. Additionally, you can get quiet up and running very quickly, without the need to join any networks.

<comment><USER11> You could also transmit to a whole room full of people without needing to connect to any networks or devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really cool project. Using ultrasonic sounds to send data isn't new. Even chromecast is using it to pair to phones without wifi or bluetooth: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/chromecast-will- talk-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/chromecast-will-talk-to- smartphones-using-ultrasonic-tones/)

<comment> brian-armstrong Thanks. I was aware of projects that do similar when I started. I had heard of some TV ad using ultrasonic tones, for example. I figured there should be a nice open library, so anyone could have this tech

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought that the average person could hear from ~20Hz-17kHz (at around 19-20). Wouldn't this mean that the signal would be audible?

<comment> brian-armstrong Depends on the person. Personally, I can't hear much above 14kHz.

Here's a youtube that runs 20Hz-20kHz if you'd like to check for yourself [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNf9nzvnd1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNf9nzvnd1k)

<comment><USER14> In your app, the "ultrasonic" signal is still audible to me. On that youtube video, I stop hearing stuff around 17,5kHz.

<comment><USER15> Youtube compresses audio above 17kHz so it shouldn't be audible at all past that.

Note: It's at some random value that isn't exactly 17kHz, I think it's 17.6kHz? So it no longer making sound for you at 17.5kHz could be because of that, not because of your hearing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Couple this with a System Bus AM Radio [1] for super fun times

[1]: [https://github.com/fulldecent/system-bus- radio](https://github.com/fulldecent/system-bus-radio)

</comment><comment><USER17> There's also minimodem for GNU/Linux systems: [http://www.whence.com/minimodem/](http://www.whence.com/minimodem/)

</comment><comment><USER18> This looks really close to what [http://www.copsonic.com](http://www.copsonic.com) is using for mobile payment (and other stuff).

</comment><comment><USER19> Would this work over a compressed (such as VoIP) connection, or even RF radio? Imagine sending a picture over an existing public safety radio network if Internet is disrupted.

<comment> brian-armstrong I just tried it with speex's wideband setting, and I was able to recover the transmitted message. I had to modify the wav file generator to output in 16-bit PCM instead of float, which speexenc doesn't support.

The narrowband profile also works, but I needed to create a new Quiet profile with a center frequency of 2200Hz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Way back when we used to scoff at softmodems!

Perhaps using the same encodings as modems do would increase effective bandwidth?

Edit: never mind, looks like it already kinda does.

</comment><comment><USER21> What bitrate are you able to achieve?

</comment><comment><USER22> Sidechannel bypass for airgaps?

<comment><USER23> The first time I heard of this technique it was (supposedly?) used for airgapped, infected machines to communicate [0]. I don't remember, though if it was proven in the end that that was actually how the malware communicated. There was some skepticism.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BadBIOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BadBIOS)</comment></comment>


People are creating fewer sites - <AUTHOR>

Creating sites is hard. You have to know: programming language, database, server, os and framework.
Creating sites is forbidden. You visit an alternative search engine or an educational site. Soon, it becomes an ad site. Creating sites is for start-ups, not for firefox add-on authors.
That's what you get. People are creating fewer sites. <comment><USER2> There's nothing stopping anyone from dumping an HTML page on to a server.

But I'd agree that less people would do that because the alternatives to creating your own are so strong. Why learn HTML at all, when all you need to create a blog is to login to Wordpress.com?

</comment><comment><USER3> Creating sites is easier than its ever been.

Creating sites that are NOT blogs is still ridiculously hard.

WYSIWYG app maker? Maybe that's the next solution.

<comment><USER4> That's what VB6 tried to be. We all know how that turned out.</comment></comment>


Scaling an AWS infrastructure - Tools and Patterns - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/8/16/scaling-an-aws-infrastructure-tools-and-patterns.html

<comment><USER2> I loved Jacob Kaplan-Moss's "Django Deployment Workshop", which he presented at PyCon and OSCon. In it, he shows how to use cloud servers (he uses the rackspace cloud) to scale multiple web and database servers and do load balancing.

It is a very pragmatic talk, not specific to Django, but suitable for most wsgi setups. It is about 3 hours long.

<http://blip.tv/file/3632436></comment>


Reasoned Discourse and the Principle of Charity - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity <comment><USER2> This is similar to a statement in the HN Guidelines:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Precisely. I've always thought it was particularly astute of them to include that line. I think guidelines like that are why HN isn't the toxic wasteland that many other communities filled with people of different viewpoints become. HN is enough of a melting pot that it could go in that direction, and I've always been impressed that people here generally manage not to.</comment></comment>