Ask HN: Python or Ruby or What?? - <AUTHOR>

Hey all - I've always wanted to increase my knowledge in programming, not to be programmer, but to know how to better interact with programmers, and also because I'm naturally curious and like building/learning things. I think I'm stuck in a paradox of choice - too many options and free courses online nowadays that I'm not moving forward in any one direction.
I'm very fortunate to have a badass tech cofounder working with me on a project and he codes in Python. He's also incredibly smart and can pick up any language if he needed to. Should I just focus on Python since that's his language of choice?
TeamTreehouse has a good RoR course. Udacity has a strong, but hard, Computer Science course using Python. I've completed the Javascript track on Codecademy already. What direction should I go? Does it matter? Do I need to just stop making excuses and pick one language? Or can I try to attack 2 language simultaneously?
Would love your feedback. <comment><USER2> > I'm very fortunate to have a badass tech cofounder working with me on a > project and he codes in Python. He's also incredibly smart and can pick up > any language if he needed to. Should I just focus on Python since that's his > language of choice?

If he's going to mentor you, then that's probably a good place to start.

> TeamTreehouse has a good RoR course.

Despite the fact that I like Ruby, I don't think Rails is a great place to start to learn programming. But that's more of a subjective feeling, not something I can explain in concrete terms.

> Udacity has a strong, but hard, Computer Science course using Python.

That's probably a good choice, especially if you want to do it _right now_ and want scheduling flexibility. MITx's 6.00.1x on EdX is also a good choice, but it has a more fixed schedule (and its a couple weeks into the current session, and I don't know when the next one will be.) There's a number of other strong -- often Python-based -- courses available via EdX and Coursera.

> Do I need to just stop making excuses and pick one language? Or can I try to > attack 2 language simultaneously?

There is a perspective to be gained on programming that comes from learning more than one language (particularly if they aren't closely related languages), but its probably best to focus on one first and then branch out to more if you find a deeper interest.

Probably...

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. Thank you. Seriously, great response - very much appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ruby is a dangerous language. It is so dominated by Rails that you will likely end up warping your mind into thinking that the ActiveRecord pattern is the best way to manage data and that every problem can be solved with a web app.

I would suggest learning Python instead because there is more diversity in the Python community (or should I say communities?). Compare the communities around [http://ipython.org/notebook.html](http://ipython.org/notebook.html) and [http://www.gevent.org/](http://www.gevent.org/) and [http://plone.org/documentation/#developer_doc](http://plone.org/documentation/#developer_doc)

<comment><USER2> > Ruby is a dangerous language. It is so dominated by Rails that you will > likely end up warping your mind into thinking that the ActiveRecord pattern > is the best way to manage data and that every problem can be solved with a > web app.

That hasn't been my experience, and I don't think its generally true as long as you don't learn Ruby _through_ Rails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What about Groovy?[1]

From the website:

\- is an agile and dynamic language for the Java Virtual Machine

\- builds upon the strengths of Java but has additional power features inspired by languages like Python, Ruby and Smalltalk

\- makes modern programming features available to Java developers with almost- zero learning curve

\- provides the ability to statically type check and statically compile your code for robustness and performance

\- supports Domain-Specific Languages and other compact syntax so your code becomes easy to read and maintain

\- makes writing shell and build scripts easy with its powerful processing primitives, OO abilities and an Ant DSL

\- increases developer productivity by reducing scaffolding code when developing web, GUI, database or console applications

\- simplifies testing by supporting unit testing and mocking out-of-the-box

\- seamlessly integrates with all existing Java classes and libraries

\- compiles straight to Java bytecode so you can use it anywhere you can use Java

It has also recently entered the top 20 on Tiobe Index and it's the only one amongst other well-known JVM languages ( Scala (#36), JavaFX Script (#41) and Clojure (#76)) [2]

[1] [http://groovy.codehaus.org/](http://groovy.codehaus.org/) [2] [http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html)

<comment><USER5> > What about Groovy?[1] > From the website:

Most of this is marketing talk without any specific examples or comparisons. The project manager for Codehaus Groovy is a non-technical SpringSource employee who frequently makes bold statements about Groovy without giving any evidence.

> \- builds upon the strengths of Java but has additional power features > inspired by languages like Python, Ruby and Smalltalk

Groovy is really just a clone of Ruby but with Java-like syntax. It's business purpose was solely to be an appendage to Grails, so Grails could take some market-share away from Rails. "Ruby on Rails", "Groovy on Grails", get it?

Grails itself started as a thin wrapper around other software products from various companies (e.g. Spring from SpringSource, Hibernate from JBoss) so Grails dictator Graeme Rocher could use it to muscle in on the training and consultancy markets for those products. He then started a company, G2One Inc, and quickly shopped it around among the various companies whose products he bundled, successfully fooling SpringSource into buying it 12 mths afterwards.

Always look thru the marketing talk to the business purpose of something when deciding whether to adopt. You'll get burnt otherwise.

> It has also recently entered the top 20 on Tiobe Index and it's the only one > amongst other well-known JVM languages ( Scala (#36), JavaFX Script (#41) > and Clojure (#76)) [2]

6 months ago Groovy wasn't even in their Top 50. I doubt Groovy suddenly became popular in a mere 6 months. Groovy's sudden high ranking says more about how dubious Tiobe's algorithms are than about Groovy's uptake by developers.

In fact, Tiobe have been frequently changing their algorithms over the last 6 months so maybe there's been some interference. 3 years ago (Dec 2010) Groovy Tech Lead Jochen Theodorou volunteered his services to Tiobe to polish their algorithms. Groovy then shot up from below 50 to number 25. In April 2011, however, Groovy dropped from 25 to number 65 in a single month when Tiobe added more search engines. Hope Groovy's not similarly embarrassed again because of the short-sightedness of it's non-technical promoters.

<comment><USER4> Do you like the language?

<comment><USER5> Looks like Groovy has been embarrassed again:

> Groovy, which turned up in the 18th spot last month, slid back down to a > number 32 ranking. "After a long discussion with one of the Tiobe index > readers, it turned out that the data that is produced by one of the Chinese > sites that we track is interpreted incorrectly by our algorithms. So this > was a bug," Janssen said. "After we had fixed this bug, Groovy lost much of > its ratings." The ratings slip takes Groovy from a 0.658 percent rating last > month to 0.393 percent this month.

...according to [http://www.infoworld.com/t/application- development/c-pulls-a...](http://www.infoworld.com/t/application- development/c-pulls-away-java-among-top-programming-languages-230603)

I suspect someone was just priming up Groovy in the rankings for a month only to help win a consulting contract for Pivotal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would suggest, for what you describe, it really doesn't matter that much. If you'd like help deciding from a random stranger on the internet, I'd say go with Python. Your friend knows it, and it anecdotally appears to me that Python is used as a first language in school coursework more than Ruby is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. I've felt the same, just curious what others would say, especially if anyone here was in my shoes in the past. Appreciate the feedback though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think a better question to ask is: "Do I know somebody who is proficient in this language that can help me learn when I get stuck?" A real life friend that will explain things to you when you need help is going to be infinitely more useful that an online tutorial.

Go with Python.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah good point. I'm fortunate to know people from both Ruby and Python who would help. And each one has their own bias as to which one to learn. But you make a great point, a real life friend you can pester with questions is very helpful.</comment></comment>


The misinterpretation of minimum viable product - <AUTHOR> http://startupnorth.ca/

<comment><USER2> An mvp is a staggered flow of features, each is solid, rather than a burst of features that are released half baked under the disguise of market testing.</comment>


Pusher DNS Hacked? - <AUTHOR> http://pusher.com Using Google's 126.96.36.199 DNS server I get a "parked domain" style site on 22.214.171.124 <comment><USER2> I'm Max Williams, CEO of Pusher, and I wanted to add a quick comment to this.

Having your domain name expire is pretty high on the list of most embarrassing things to cause issues. The reality of the situation is that registering a domain comes quite early in a company's history, before you have some of the information management systems in place. In our case, the reminder emails went to a single individual, who somehow managed to miss them. We have changed the contact details, and will be doing a post-mortem to make sure similar scenarios are covered in our integration tests.

It certainly doesn't indicate any lack of care for the reliability of the service. It's simply the result of a ridiculous administrative failing.

I am very sorry for any inconvenience caused.

</comment><comment><USER3> If I was relying on a third party for push notifications (something I can easily do on my own, btw), the one single reason for downtime that would totally not be acceptable for me is them forgetting to renew their domain.

This is a huge indicator, IMHO, that they don't really believe in their service and don't even do the absolute minimum that's required for keeping it up.

Worse, depending on the type of message I'm passing through them, this might have privacy or security implications as messages will now be sent to a non- related third party.

Stuff like this is why I personally am very, very careful before outsourcing any part of my core infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> We looked at using Pusher but having looked at their financials[0], we decided to implement similar functionality ourselves. Personally, I don't think the business is sustainable since it's trivial to build web socket functionality into an application, and hosting it on AWS or similar PaaS is cheap too.

[0] [https://www.duedil.com/company/07489873/pusher- limited/finan...](https://www.duedil.com/company/07489873/pusher- limited/financials)

<comment><USER2> Relying on this kind of financial data for an early stage company is always a bit risky. AFAICS, this is for the year ending March 2012, when we were significantly smaller than we currently are. We only turned on the ability to pay in August 2011!

Those financials have very little bearing on our current position. For the record, we're now profitable and growing healthily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like the domain expired but they are working on it.

<https://twitter.com/pusher/status/341136374243659776>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> using Google's 220.127.116.11 DNS server I get a "parked domain" style site on 220.127.116.11</comment>


Benchmarking shell pipelines and the Unix "tools" philosophy - <AUTHOR> https://blog.plover.com/Unix/tools.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for this!

Another nice thing about /usr/bin/time is the --verbose flag which gives:

      Command being timed: "ls"
      User time (seconds): 0.00
      System time (seconds): 0.00
      Percent of CPU this job got: 0%
      Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:00.00
      Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
      Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
      Average stack size (kbytes): 0
      Average total size (kbytes): 0
      Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 1912
      Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
      Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 0
      Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 112
      Voluntary context switches: 1
      Involuntary context switches: 1
      Swaps: 0
      File system inputs: 0
      File system outputs: 0
      Socket messages sent: 0
      Socket messages received: 0
      Signals delivered: 0
      Page size (bytes): 4096
      Exit status: 0

:)

<comment><USER3> Can anyone comment why you can only use the verbose flag if you use the full path of time?

        time -v ls

does not work but

        /usr/bin/time -v ls

does? I don't have enough knowledge of either linux applications or bash to know whats happening to cause this.

<comment><USER4> This is very likely because without the full path your shell is using the `time` builtin function of your shell as opposed to using the binary.

The shell's builtin keyword for `time` is more limited in nature than the full `time` binary. This is true of a number of other common unix commands as well, e.g. `echo`. The manpage for your shell should describe the builtins functions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I got excited when I saw the 'f' and 'count' commands, but they're just scripts he has on his system. Like doing grep 'plover' blah.log | cut -d ' ' -f 11 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n. Personally I'd prefer to use the ubiquitous commands that work everywhere than rely on having custom scripts on my system, but they are nice.

<comment><USER6> Most people who use Unix directly build up some stuff in ~/bin (often a misnomer because it's shell scripts and not binaries, although mine is less of a misnomer than most because so much is in C rather than shell). The trick is to build them _out of_ the standard portable components that exist everywhere. (This means, among other things, no #!/bin/bash.)

<comment><USER2> sed 's| no | not only |'

<comment><USER7> /bin/bash won't usually ship with a BSDish OS because of the license, so it is not generally portable to use bash-isms. (HPUX, IRIX, SunOS, Solaris, etc. I don't reckon would have had bash either)

<comment><USER8> Not to mention once installed on a BSD it would most likely reside in /usr/bin/bash (OpenBSD for instance)

<comment><USER9> Or /usr/local/bin/bash (on FreeBSD).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "What if Unix had less compositionality but I could use it with less memorized trivia? Would that be an improvement? I don't know."

The answer is "no" here, because the alternative doesn't exist. Could it be created? Maybe in theory, but I suspect that the amount of stuff that you'd need to memorize (or learn to look up) to use it effectively would be about the same for any system that allowed a similar variety of work to be accomplished. If you are willing to trade off functionality for simplicity, then sure, it can be done. You can get it today by just not using all these tools at all, I suppose.

<comment><USER11> There would be less trivia to memorize if the command behaviors and options were more consistent. You may not be able to achieve that at the edges, where new commands and options are added, but you can always go back and clean things up.

For example, the cut(1) command is intended to do precisely what his f script does. But it's inconvenient because unlike many other commands it (1) doesn't obey $IFS and (2) the -d delimiter option only takes a single character. This could and should be remediated with a new, simple option.

I think the only thing preventing that change is that there's not enough interest in moving POSIX forward faster; certainly not like JavaScript.

Another problem are GNU tools. They have many great features but _OMG_ are they a nightmare of inconsistency. BSD extensions tend to be much better thought through, perhaps because GNU tools tend to be lead by a single developer while BSD tools tend to be more team oriented.

So the way forward isn't to replace the organic evolution, it's to layer on processes that refine the proven extensions. And we already have some of those processes in place; we just need to imbue them with more authority, and that starts by not rolling our eyes at standardization and portability.

<comment><USER12> Authority is the problem...not standardization and portability. Everyone is willing and able to tell you the best way to do your work if you use their tools. Straitjacketing implementation in the name of order is a surefire way to dissuade people from using your tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 'sort | uniq -c | sort -n' is an interesting pipeline. It will always work and does a great job with large cardinality data on low memory systems.

However, if you have the ram, or know the data set has a low cardinality (like, http status codes or filesnames instead of ip addresses) then something that works in memory will be much more efficient.

I threw 144,000,000 'hello' and 'world' into a file:

      justin@box:~$ ls -lh words
      -rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin 824M Jan  7 15:21 words
      justin@box:~$ wc -l words
      144000000 words

      justin@box:~$ time (sort <words|uniq  -c)
      72000000 hello
      72000000 world

      real 0m22.831s
      user 0m32.999s
      sys 0m4.675s

Compared to doing it in memory with awk:

      justin@box:~$ time awk '{words[$1]++} END {for (w in words) printf("%s %d\n", w, words[w])}' < words
      hello 72000000
      world 72000000

      real 0m10.639s
      user 0m9.736s
      sys 0m0.876s

so, half the time and 1/3 the cpu.

<comment><USER14> All of your examples work in memory.

<comment><USER13> Not exactly. sort (at least GNU sort) will end up doing external merge sort on temporary files if you give it more data than you have memory. Which, if you give it 100GB of 5 different strings, ends up being a huge waste.

<comment><USER2> Not only GNU sort, but also postgresql, mysql and many more...

Please, "huge waste"? How do you sort something that does not fit in memory?

<comment><USER13> Are you being difficult on purpose?

I posted a comment on how 'sort | uniq -c | sort -n' is an interesting and very capable pipeline, but often misused and slower than other alternatives.

> you are comparing

Yes, I am comparing two methods of accomplishing the same thing. That is how comparing things works.

> Please, "huge waste"? How do you sort something that does not fit in memory?

Note how the full sentence included "if you give it 100GB of 5 different strings". If your input is 100GB of 5 different strings, then the hash table will easily fit in memory, and sorting the entire data set only to pass it to 'uniq -c' is indeed a 'huge waste'.

There are tons of large data sets that only have a small number of unique values in particular fields. protocols, ports, http status codes, hour of the day, etc. 'sort | uniq -c | sort -n' will work for all of them, but not nearly as efficient a hash table.

<comment><USER2> > Are you being difficult on purpose?

Programming is about paying the _bare minimum_ attention to the details.

> [...] two methods of accomplishing the same thing [...]

Absolutelly not.

one prints:

      72000000 hello
      72000000 world

the other

      hello 72000000
      world 72000000

Now try both examples against a file with more than one column to understand what I'm talking about ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15>
             for i in $(seq 1 20); do
               (run once and emit the total CPU time)
             done |addup

"Here we don't actually care about the output (we never actually use $i) but it's a convenient way to get the for loop to run twenty times."

This is slower than not running seq and just using builtins.

             n=1;while true;do
             test $n -le 20||break;
               (run once and emit the total CPU time)
             n=$((n+1));
             done |addup

<comment><USER16> The author did say _convenient_ , not fast.

If you don't want the inefficiencies of seq, bash has:

      for (( expr1 ; expr2 ; expr3 )) ; do list ; done

which is a lot more idiomatic than constructing a for loop out of a while loop.

<comment><USER17> You could also just use a bash brace expansion:

        for i in {1..20}
        do
          ...
        done

[https://wiki.bash-hackers.org/syntax/expansion/brace](https://wiki.bash- hackers.org/syntax/expansion/brace)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I haven't been able to open this site for days (Timeout error, thought it was down), until today that I decided to use tor

</comment><comment><USER19> > The appearance of the TIME=… assignment at the start of the shell command > disabled the shell's special builtin treatment of the keyword time, so it > really did use /usr/bin/time. This computer stuff is amazingly complicated. > I don't know how anyone gets anything done.

Indeed.

</comment><comment><USER20> the ACTUAL benchmark should be:

1) start timer

2) start deciding which commands to pipeline together

3) run the commands

4) stop timer

a lot of times the decision is the long pole.

in this authors case it included:

5) try a couple more variants of steps 2 and 3

6) write a blog post

:)

<comment><USER21> This is a good point about the second half of the article (compositonality), but the author started the article by saying this was a command he "sometimes runs", presumably indicating he has it saved somewhere.

<comment><USER20> My commands of this type are usually retrieved using control-r</comment></comment></comment>


Tally raises $15M for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/19/tally-raises-15-million-for-app-to-make-credit-cards-less-expensive-easier-to-manage/ <comment><USER2> I built the core financial engineering stack at Tally and absolutely love our product! The stuff I worked on was cool (lots of highly non convex optimizations, cool statistical methods, all Scala stack, very FP-oriented, etc.) but mainly the experience we deliver to consumers is incredibly powerful. The biggest challenge was probably getting this very complex, very real-time concept to work on an antiquated financial system. We're proud to say we have. Sign up now! You won't regret it!

Also, PM if interested in anything on the "Careers" page. What do you all think?

Cheers!

<comment><USER3> It's remarkably difficult to find your company page with a search engine. I tried "tally financial" and "tally credit card" as my search terms.

<comment><USER4> yea it's a busy term. we just came out of stealth so it will take us a little to climb up the search rankings. (part of the tradeoffs you are making when picking a company name.)

[https://www.meettally.com/](https://www.meettally.com/)

<comment><USER5> Was there any particular reason this name stood out for you guys even if you knew it was a busy term?

I even searched directly for Tally Technologies and some other Tally Technology name pops up.

How expensive it is for a company that just came out of stealth to increase the search rankings vs changing the name to something less crowded?

It's just an interesting problem since it seems more and more companies are using the same terms (or maybe meaningful company names are drying up?, like that South Park episode), instead of creating new nonsense names.

Maybe nonsense names are not as attractive to potential customers of a financial company?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tally appears to do no underwriting it simply offers you a lower rate than your current cards offer and allows you to pay all the bills at once? Or does Tally have a proprietary method to tell which borrowers are worthy of a lower rate, the story is not really clear on this point.

<comment><USER7> Tally underwrites.

from [https://www.meettally.com/how](https://www.meettally.com/how)

       you will need to qualify for and get the Tally Credit Line. Depending on
       your credit history, your APR (which is the same as your interest rate) will
       be between 7.9% - 19.9% per year. And similar to credit card APRs, it will
       vary with the market based on the Prime Rate.

This looks like it could be helpful, but those rates are no better than your local CU offers.

As mentioned elsewhere, this seems like a hard business -- smart people use their credit cards as charge cards and pif every month. You probably aren't carrying a balance at 20% plus if you have the cash elsewhere. But good luck to them; the more competition banks have the better.

<comment><USER6> If a credit card company can make money from me by charging the merchants I use the card with, and the credit card company gets its money for free through bank deposits and the credit card company has decades and hundreds of millions already invested in its underwriting model, how can Tally sustainably charge me less than the credit card company?

<comment><USER8> Hey, great question. This is Jason (Tally co-founder). Credit card APRs are massively inflated. Here are two points to consider:

A. There is a 500% difference in the likelihood of someone paying back a loan with a 760 FICO score vs someone with a 660 FICO score, but only an 8% difference in APR.

B. "the credit card business continues to be the most profitable bank lending business, with returns more than four times higher than the average return on assets." \- Richard Cordray, Director of the CFPB (December 2015)

The bottom line is that banks are significantly overcharging consumers AND have high fixed costs. Because of the technology Tally has built, our cost structure is an order of magnitude lower than banks. This means we can save customers money and be profitable as a business.

<comment><USER5> Do you guys fear that if big banks start to feel threatened, they will start lobbying to keep the field uneven to their favor?

Leaves me wondering how much inroad is possible to make going against such big (and dirty-playing) actors.

I mean, obviously if you get to that point you must be doing something right, and shaking the big entrenched businesses can sometimes (most of the times? always?) bring good things, so good luck!

<comment><USER4> Big banks are powerful and we don't take that risk lightly. However, regulators like the relatively new CFPB, are generally on the side of consumers. So as long as we always do right by consumers and don't lend irresponsibly, we have a very good chance of being on the right side of history. That said, we'll take any and all luck you can send our way

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So I was probably in your target market last year but I'm struggling to understand how this product works. I work in tech but was laid off mid year and simultaneously incurred a bunch of debt. So I carried a balance of around $15k for most of the year (13% APR) until I could build savings up and get back on track. Thankfully I'm debt free now, but if I had had Tally, would it have paid off the balance and then I would have paid Tally a lower rate?

<comment><USER8> Jason here again. Tally is like a self driving car for your credit cards. Here's how it might have played out for you if you had had Tally before, during, and after carrying a balance.

1\. Before you carried a balance ($0 Balance) -Tally is free to use and pays all your cards for you every month. This means that instead of keeping track of multiple payments and due dates, you make just one payment to Tally. No more late fee anxiety. Easily manage all your cards in a single app.

2\. During balance building (building up to your $15K balance) -Since you lost your job, you no longer choose to pay 100% of what you spend every month. Instead, you just pay pay your Tally minimum and your Tally balance grows. -Instead of paying 13% APR to your credit cards, your balance is held with Tally at a lower APR. I obviously don't know your credit score, so I can't say what your Tally APR would be, but for me my best credit card APR is 13.24% and my Tally APR is 8.90%. So assuming you qualify for the same Tally APR as I do, you'd save $500-$600 in interest.

3\. During balance paydown (paying down your $15K balance) -Since you now have a job, you start paying more than the Tally minimum. -Tally continues to pay your cards on-time for you, and you just make one payment to Tally. -Eventually you pay your Tally balance down to $0.

4\. After balance paydown ($0 balance) -Tally continues to pay and optimize your credit cards. Tally is free to use, protects you from late fees, and is the easiest way to manage all your cards.

<comment><USER9> Ah ok. Makes sense. I remember searching for a low interest loan because I knew I would be able to pay it back and thought 13% was ridiculous for such a credit worthy individual (credit score 760). Thanks for taking the time to answer, it is definitely a cool product!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe I'm missing something here, but this looks like a business with massive downside risk and very little upside.

It's bundling a bunch of bad debt (nobody who manages their money well is going to pay 20% interest if they have better options) and hoping that the aggregate is less risky. I have a feeling we've seen that sort of wishful thinking about debt before.

So what am I missing that makes Tally so good at managing the risk that people just run up huge debts on multiple cards and leave Tally holding the baby?

<comment><USER11> Yes, not seeing the business model here. They're basically issuing a credit card of their own.

Somehow, I suspect this will morph into a "consolidate your bills" scheme, or the low rate is only an introductory rate, or there will be big fees, or they try to sell you on a home equity loan, like LowerMyBills.com.

<comment><USER8> Good question on introductory rates and fees. Tally does NOT offer introductory or "teaser" rates. Your Tally APR is your Tally APR.

And Tally does NOT charge ANY fees of ANY kind. Here's a cut and paste from our FAQ: "There's no annual fee, no origination fee, no prepayment fee, no balance transfer fee, no late fee, no overlimit fee, nada. Like you, we hate hidden fees."

Tally makes money by charging interest on the amount you borrow from us. We only make money if we can save you money. But that's it.

<comment><USER11> The site does not seem to have terms and conditions, so we don't know if Tally reserves the right to change that at any time, with or without notice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I suspect there would be much less market for the autopay feature here in the UK, where you can ask the bank to direct-debit the minimum amount every month to make sure you have no late fees.

I'm skeptical about the improved rates for debt consolidation, but if you're going to give people subsidised credit with investor's money I'm not going to complain.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1\. How does Tally calculate how to much to pay for a bill? For example, sometimes I have will receive a statement weeks prior to the bill date where I only have to pay a small amount, but I'm actually carrying a larger by the time that the payment due date comes around.

2\. Do you do a hard pull of credit?

<comment><USER8> You raise a really good question. Credit cards are confusing by design. Many people don't have the time to optimize how they pay their cards.

The Tally algorithm absorbs all this complexity and recommends whatever is in your best interest.

1\. With the fact pattern you've provided, there are situations where Tally would only pay the Statement Balance (the smaller amount you mention) so that you can take advantage of your card's grace period.

But if you are not in grace with a card (meaning you haven't paid 100% of your Statement Balances for the previous 2 consecutive statement periods), Tally will suggest paying more/all of the Statement Balance to minimize your interest charges.

Bottom line: Tally is really smart and mathematically suggests whatever is in your best interest.

2\. To see if Tally makes sense for you, its a soft pull and then a hard pull to actually open a Tally account.

-Jason (Tally co-founder).

<comment><USER13> Ironically, by doing a hard pull, you're hurting my credit slightly, which is against your stated mission.

Some of the appeal of the new FinTech startups are that they don't measure customers based off traditional models of risk eval (FICO, etc.) but that they are able to factor in both past and future based on many more data points. I'll keep monitoring Tally and hope in the future you can arrive to this same point.

BTW, I hope you look into marketing to credit card churners. I think they would love your product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Debt consolidator, but on a phone. All usual criticisms of debt consolidation, but with the irrational exuberance of a SV startup to add on.

<comment><USER8> Tally is more like a self driving car for your credit cards. It helps optimizes all your payments, balances, stops late fees, and helps you avoid obscure penalties.

Even if you never carry a balance, Tally is the easiest ways to manage your credit cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, revolving debt consolidation? Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER16>
       "Tally solves problems that customers have managing multiple credit cards, incurring charges or fees, and not knowing which one to pay first," Flynn said. "Theirs is an elegant solution that can apply to a lot of people."

      "The investment community has gotten comfortable with non-bank entities originating loan assets," Brown said.

Institutional investors were pulling back from buying marketplace lender debt even before the Lending Club nonsense. IMO only dumb money is going to be interested in loaning money at less than credit card rates to consumers who will use the funds to pay off their credit card debt. Maybe a year ago....</comment>


Errors vs bugs and the end of stupidity - <AUTHOR> http://celandine13.livejournal.com/33599.html

<comment><USER2> This article reminds me of an essay by Edsger Dijkstra, EWD1036 [0], comparing digital vs analog processes, and how they lead us to think of discrete bugs vs continuous errors.

(I recall it as arguing against the naive tendency of considering machines as continuous devices).

Interestingly, Dijkstra also uses a musician as example, for the alternative view:

 _if the violinist slightly misplaces his finger, he plays slightly out of tune_

[0] [http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html)

<comment><USER3> > if the violinist slightly misplaces his finger, he plays slightly out of > tune

This depends on whether the slightly misplaced finger ends up on the correct string, correct? I suppose to a violinist, however, a finger that was no longer on the correct string would not be _slightly_ misplaced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I try to attribute behavior to extrinsic properties whenever possible. And then consider it intrinsic if proven otherwise.

Most people seem to do it the opposite way, which probably leads to a lot of classification errors. Fixing an intrinsic problem is so hard that it's considered a waste of time by most, whereas fixing an extrinsic problem is within the realm of possibility.

I figure it's better to waste time trying to do the impossible if the alternative is to leave a lot of low hanging fruit untouched.

<comment><USER5> Oddly, I've been pondering the intrinsic/extrinsic divide recently. I was seeing the same thing you are referring to, I believe. Easy example is traffic. People think it is something intrinsic to traffic that has them upset. That is clearly false, if I can go through the same traffic and not be upset.

So, firstly, is that essentially the same thing? And second, any good reading on this idea?

<comment><USER6> More close to extrinsic/intrinsic is the traffic problem itself.

Is traffic created by individuals, or is traffic created by a larger systematic effect?

If you have the first perspective, then you're likely to be upset at people and at the traffic. If you take the second perspective, you're likely to understand its true nature and possible ways of fixing it.

In my experience, the systematic perspective is almost always the correct one. Individuals are merely operating their best within their system. Exactly as in the original post with her fingers and the piano. Brilliant analogy.

We need more systems thinking, beyond just intrinsic/extrinsic understanding.

I don't know any good reading on the psychological effect you speak of, but good reading to start on systems thinking is Deming and go from there: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming>

<comment><USER4> This is basically what I was talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting view, but I wonder if it applies on so large a field the author seem to believe. Piano may be a good example: some wrong notes can be bugs but if the kid do not enjoy playing music and take it as a chore, no amount of bug fixing will help.

Same for math, no-one said everyone must love them, because it is not that lovable, and to be good at it math lover have a head start. So before getting to the learning disability bug fixer you might want to make your kids fall in love with math or grammar or whatever.

That's how I remember my love affair with math: one day a math teacher did trigger love for math in me. It was a mix of telling me I was good at it, showing me how powerful and wonderful a machine it is, and so on.

<comment><USER8> You do have a point, but I wonder what's behind that 'love in math' you're talking about. I tend to think that curiosity is the only basic character trait needed to fall in love with something as basic as math, grammar, music or physics. However, the way this kind of love is _triggered_ doesn't necessarily correspond to how it is taught in lower classes. At least when I went to primary school in the 90ies, 'math' was really just numerical algorithms (which are IMO _not_ at the root of what math is, it's just one sub field). What can it be applied to in our daily lives? (considering someone doesn't take a higher math education) Knowing the price total in supermarkets, that's about it.

Couldn't we include symbolic math at a much earlier age? Children enjoy the building block properties of Legos starting at age 7 I'd say. How about we give them basic problem solving tools in math at age 10? I think we need to bring the potential feeling of achievement with mathematical tools to a much lower age. That could be geometry or color theory or basic physics (calculations with distance, velocity and time as an example).

<comment><USER7> > What can it be applied to in our daily lives?

I can only speak for myself but for me, the fact that math did not have any daily life application was one of the greatest reason to love it.

I despised physics even if I was fairly good at it. I considered physics was taking pure math virgin to a mud field and raped her there with "daily life" problems.

<comment><USER8> I understand what you mean, I think I'm wired in a similar way. However I'm skeptical whether you can spead that kind of 'love' to a wider audience without coming from the applied side of things. I believe the power to describe some daily live phenomenon in a mathematical model and _then_ use mathematical tools to predict behavior could be a very eye opening experience for many children - and I think we could design exercises that follow such a path, even with very basic algebraic tools.

Simultaneously we could also come from the other end - describing a new world in a structured language (programming) - in order to awaken desires to learn new expressions. I remember, when I was a kid I wanted to program an 'Asteroids' clone, but I couldn't get the flying behavior quite right. I was excited when I learned about vector geometry - finally I had the tool I need to model that.

<comment><USER7> I see also what you mean, but this might apply more to programming or physics than to math. Being completely "useless" is a feature, not a bug, for math (and poetry, music, metaphysics, astronomy). Pure speculation or useless braingames is a thing many humans enjoy, see Rubix-cube or Sudoku.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I had to summarize this blog post in one phrase it would be: _work the problem not the person_. The act of solving the problem changes the person.

The major exception to this is intent. When a person isn't interested in solving the problem this technique will be less effective. And since all pre- college education is compulsory there will always be a significant percentage of students in need of an attitude adjustment.

<comment><USER6> Then the _attitude_ is the problem, and you need to work that. Fix the system to change the attitude.

As an aside, no one commenting on this post really understands it.

She's saying: look, it's not a person problem, it's a systematic problem. If you look at everything this way, it's a better paradigm; it opens doors, it allows you to grow, instead of shutting down based on incorrect assumptions and false pretenses.

In fact, I'll go broader: few people on HN or in the business community at large really understands that people problems are really systems problems.

Systems thinking. That's what she's talking about. And _she's absolutely right,_ it's the most powerful paradigm shift available, and more people need to have it.

This guy applied it to management: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming>

Her music teacher applied it to piano. Both geniuses.

Everyone here should apply it to business. Trust me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the matter of talking about bugs, I try to use terminology influenced by the SEI.

"It's crashed" --> "It has failed".

"It's behaving buggily" --> "There is a fault / it is faulting".

"It's a bug" --> "It's a defect".

The one to me that really matters is "defects". It's a matter of taste, but I find that the term "bug" implies mysterious agency. "Defect" correctly describes that ... there's a defect. Something is wrong and it can be fixed.

<comment><USER6> Her point was far greater than that, and it was where the "defects" come from.

The answer is the system; not the individual. And that is one of the greatest leaps in understanding possible for a person.

<comment><USER10> Sure. There's a difference between assigning causes and assigning blame. But assuming that human error is the root of failure is a useful lie.

<http://chester.id.au/2012/04/09/review-drift-into-failure/></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get your first web development client? - <AUTHOR> I enjoy designing and developing website. I would like to get paid for it. My plan is to get paid $1,000/website. How to get my first client today?<p>Note: No Fiverr or something similar. <comment><USER2> I started by reaching out by reaching out to everyone I knew who does freelance. I managed to get my first client that way because I was at the top of mind of one my friends when their friend needed a dev very quickly.

The first way to get clients is to call up friends. Also, $1000 for a website is very low depending on what it is you're doing.</comment>


A set of best practices for JavaScript projects [UPDATED] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wearehive/project-guidelines/blob/master/README.md <comment><AUTHOR> We had to come up with a set of common practices for everyone to follow in our team. The result was a list of guidelines which looks random and is not perfect. But we try to stick to it and improve it by making it public. The reason for posting it here is to have it criticised by community. So please comment if you have better approaches or open an issue on github. Thanks</comment>


Is There a Market for Premium Online Data Visualization? - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2008/08/15/is-there-a-market-for-premium-online-data-visualization/ <comment><USER2> Wall Street On Demand, a Boulder-based startup, seems to think so (for financial data, anyway)...

<http://www.wallst.com></comment>


Venture Capitalists Back Away from Clean Energy - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/38295/?p1=A1 <comment><USER2> The headline is a little more downbeat than the story, no?

As I read it, they say that private VC investment is moving from research to development. This is consistent with the nature of VC funds - they usually have to pay back investor money within 7-10 years. The research cycle in physical sciences is frequently long enough that adding development pushes the idea beyond 10 years. As such, VCs are more interested in bringing already researched ideas (or incremental ideas) to market.

There are 2.5 antidotes to this:

1) The government can fund more basic research, similar to biology.

2) The government can put a revenue neutral tax on unclear energy. (Carbon taxing) They can use to revenue to fund #1, or give it back in the form of lower taxes. Even the latter will create financial incentives to fund alternatives.

2.5) Fund longer term (10-15 year time horizon?) VC style investments with public funds, either through pensions or other dedicated funds. This would be similar to Singapore.

I am fairly confident that #1 will help, as it benefits other areas in science. There is potential for waste, but lots of residual benefits. I am very confident that #2 will work, as it lines up everyone's incentives to solve the problems. I am only slightly confident that #2.5 will work, as it is not a business model that has worked in many other places.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is surprising to me. Photovoltaic installations are doubling about every two years. Photovoltaic costs are dropping precipitously, to the point that they're becoming competitive with fossil fuels without subsidies, and of course fossil fuels are becoming more expensive. (Liquids, anyway.) The total amount of solar energy available on Earth is something like 100 000 times the current world marketed energy consumption, which includes all of our current fossil fuel consumption plus nuclear, existing renewables, etc.

So it's a _really big deal_ who supplies the equipment for solar energy harvesting over the next couple of decades.

Maybe the US-based VCs profiled here have just given up and figured that China already has the market sewn up?

</comment><comment><USER4> I've noticed that the YC funded startups this year are particularly derivative. I guess the safe(r) money in this glum economy is in iterative also rans.

It's depressing though. There is no vision, courage or leadership from investor groups like YC. There's no "art" in these startups.</comment>


Aubrey de Grey: "What will happen if we cure aging?" (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bigthink.com/science-technology/medicine-biology/1448

<comment><USER2> Beyond the obvious issue of over-population, two problems occur to me:

1) The human brain can only record up to about 200 years or so worth of data, so, beyond that, it cannot really store memories, so people might live to be say, 500, but the continuity of the individual would disappear. (Frank Rosenblatt of the Rosenblatt perceptron estimated that 200 year number, by the way.) Living so long one cannot recall who one once was seems a dubious proposition at best.

2) Evolution works by successive generations. If people live so long that they do not have a need to reproduce very often, then interesting evolutionary consequences will arise that I can only dimly speculate on. Seems like while the humans are in a blissful state of ageless biological stasis, other species will still be evolving, say, dolphins evolving opposable thumbs, or the like, and ultimately, humans will become trapped in a time-warp, biologically speaking. They won't evolve, but other species will. They may be sentient (e.g. chimpanzees, dolphins, even highly evolved mollusks and the like perhaps), or, they may be non-sentient, like viruses and the like. If we stop evolving, we will eventually go extinct, simple as that. Oh, and, uh, sex, Yeah, if there is no more need to reproduce, we will lose our sex drive. We could still replicate ourselves via cloning, but that whole copulation bit, that will be over.

So, basically to sum up, I see an ageless society as vastly over-populated, in 'Soylent Green' proportions, with people not even having a sense of memories about who they are as individuals. People stop f*king, since there is no more evolutionary impetus for that, and eventually we are replaced by viruses, sentient mollusks, or both.

What the anti-aging people will have to come to realize is that only the gene is immortal, her carriers are not, and if they try to be, the gene will still win in the end.

<comment><USER3> that's what the regeneration process is for. and you only get 12 of them so don't waste them by falling off the top of a radio tower or be poisoned by gas.

in all seriousness, I very much enjoyed your comment. In my opinion, I think it would be great if we could somehow make the process of aging less uncomfortable for our last half of our life while keeping our natural lifespan more or less the same 70 +/-. But if we can find cures for alzheimers, skin cancer, etc that would be great for our quality of life. But where do you draw a line between anti-aging and cures for diseases such as these?

<comment><USER2> Interesting question. I am not a biologist, but I believe I read that cells have a sort of "internal clock", modulated by certain enzymes. Normally cells reproduce in a certain way, but these enzymes deplete over time, such that at a certain point the cellular structures don't reproduce in the same manner as before. Hence, "aging". So, sure I am all for finding treatments for Alzheimer's and so on, but aging itself, as outlined above, is just really an evolutionary necessity. Stephen King treats this sensitive topic well in his novel, 'Pet Sematary', dealing with both the human resistance to, and the biological necessity of, death, including the aging process leading into that. Personally I find great comfort in the idea that even if however many millions of years from now, all or most mammals, including humans, will be extinct, some of our genes won't be, just as for example birds have some of the genes the dinosaurs had. The individual may be here for only a short time, but the genes she carries are far more transcendent.</comment></comment></comment>


16GB Mechanical Memory Key - <AUTHOR> http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=25988523

<comment><USER2> I find this USB stick distasteful. It's not mechanical, all the gears do nothing. The designer took parts that had a precise function and rearranged them into something useless for appearance's sake.

This is probably a weird reaction, but maybe other hackers felt the same way.

<comment><USER3> I agree entirely! I see a lot of 'steampunk' thinks like this pop up on the MAKE Magazine blog (and similar) and have always found it somewhat onanistic, despite the face-value beauty of some of the pieces.

In the end, I feel that form should follow function. Making something like this look like it _should_ be functioning in ways that it never will perhaps just serves to outline its mundanity.

(Ooh err, I've probably gone and thought about it too much again.)

<comment><USER4> I feel much worse about it when car companies or furniture makers try to make one material look like another. Faux wood, faux leather, ect. I consider the steam punk aesthetic to be purely ornamental. That the ornaments may appear at first glance to have some practical purpose doesn't detract from the overall aesthetic for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you liked that, you'd probably enjoy the steampunk laptop.

[http://www.datamancer.net/steampunklaptop/steampunklaptop.ht...](http://www.datamancer.net/steampunklaptop/steampunklaptop.htm)

Personally I prefer functionally tactile artifacts to imitation tactile artifacts, but both of them do look pretty cool. (Imagine the difference between a mechanical wristwatch and an electronic wristwatch which has an internal speaker emit a ticking sound. The electronic wristwatch keeps better time, but if you're going for extravagantly wasteful obsolete technology, then go for the freaking gold.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very impressive! Thanks. Most mods don't hold my attention for very long, but that just looks incredible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Misleading title. This is just a standard USB memory key decorated with some parts from a mechanical watch. Nice craftmanship though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I just took the title from the page.

<comment><USER7> And HN policy says this is right, doesn't it? But perhaps we should allow editorializing titles when they are misleading or sensationalist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When did a 12 hour project become "an age"? Real watchmakers like John Harrison spent /years/ on a single piece.

</comment><comment><USER9> Did he sell it for only $10??

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but it does look that way at first. $10 was just the shipping cost. The key sold for $165.

The idea of selling that for $10 seems almost criminal! Actually, even $165 sounds low, considering the time and parts he put into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a gorgeous piece of craftsmanship. I would love a gift certificate to etsy.</comment>


Anarchism's Possibilities by Kim Stanley Robinson - <AUTHOR> https://anarchiststudies.org/10685-2/ <comment><USER2> I had a good laugh.</comment>


Ask HN: Making experiments actually work? - <AUTHOR> Our startup is seed funded and we've built some stuff but are still pre-product/market fit. I (founder) am worried we might be on the wrong track. I've read The Lean Startup but our attempts to test and learn don't seem to be as significant as we hoped.
For example, I went to a store where the sorts of users we're targeting would shop, and asked some questions of about 6 of them. At the time it felt really interesting, but it hasn't really changed our plan.
Are we doing it wrong? Is the whole experiment and learn thing just hype or do others get stuck? <comment><USER2> Yes, you're doing it wrong. If you're not learning something significant, i.e. that changes what you build, then you're probably testing the wrong thing.

One way to focus more is to look at what you're currently planning to build, and then figure out what risks that would test. And then look for other ways to assess those same risks.

A classic article on this: [https://hackernoon.com/the-mvp-is-dead-long-live- the-rat-233...](https://hackernoon.com/the-mvp-is-dead-long-live-the- rat-233d5d16ab02)

</comment><comment><USER3> A bit of both.

A counterexample to "lean startup" is one of the products that you see on TV informercials: the garden hose that expands when you turn on the water.

If you talked to gardeners, homeowners, etc. you might get some grousing about how their garden hose is awkward but probably no one would tell you they need a garden hose that expands.

Some guy got the idea for that, developed it, got a patent, and started selling it. Other people saw it was a hit product and found ways to make expanding garden hoses that don't infringe the original patent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good example and cool product. But we have a SaaS product with a pretty clear vision and are trying to hook some early users. Does this mean we should keep building functionality?</comment></comment>


How the FBI made the world a more dangerous place by shutting down Silkroad 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/06/how-the-fbi-just-made-the-world-a-more-dangerous-place-by-shutting-down-silkroad-2-0-and-a-bunch-of-online-drug-markets/ <comment><USER2> The same argument is better directed at drug prohibition writ large, and seems intellectually incoherent when focused selectively on individual enforcement actions.

Too, there's something galling about the idea of militating for forbearance for the drug market that serves primarily the wealthiest actors. Before we turn a blind eye to what are in fact gigantic organized criminal conspiracies operated by the kinds of people who will happily slap $70,000 on the barrel for a vanity electric car, maybe we could take a hard look at sentencing laws and early release programs.

Finally: it's an easy sleight of hand trick to suggest that the "darknet" traffic solely in substances, as if allowing them to operate unimpeded would have only the effect of getting some of the drug trade off the street.

<comment><USER3> _Finally: it 's an easy sleight of hand trick to suggest that the "darknet" traffic solely in substances_

Absolutely. For example these sites routinely sell guns into parts of the world with strict and popular gun control policies. Ask an average man on the British street if their country is being made safer by sites that let anyone easily buy guns that are delivered to the door, and see what response you get ...

<comment><USER4> Not _that_ routinely... Guns have developed a reputation for either being scams or the seller getting busted routinely (almost all the BMR busts were related either to poison or guns), never sell well (which is why SR1 shut down its Armory section after a few months - no sales), and around half the markets outright ban sales of them (see my census [http://www.gwern.net/Black- market%20survival#data](http://www.gwern.net/Black-market%20survival#data) ).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The FBI raids might actually be giving free publicity to these kind of markets. People who had never heard of them have now read news stories about the markets and might now seek them out.

After all, the services that sprang up to take the place of the original silk road soon grew bigger than the original site. Perhaps the same thing will happen now with whatever new services now emerge?

<comment><USER6> I think that you're right. The FBI has (so far) only managed to take down three of the top six darknet markets[1]. It seems likely that the majority of the sellers from the shutdown sites will move their operations over to the remaining three; bolstering their sizes and attracting more customers.

[1]: [http://www.digitalcitizensalliance.org/cac/alliance/content....](http://www.digitalcitizensalliance.org/cac/alliance/content.aspx?page=Darknet)

<comment><USER7> The FBI is acting as a good litmus test of the security and confidentiality of these sites as well. If they got three but the others are still running, then maybe it means it is harder for them to find out where or who is running those sites.

You would hope eventually we can use this evolutionary process to see completely opaque black markets emerge. Or you may not hope, depending on purview.

<comment><USER8> > If they got three but the others are still running, then maybe it means it > is harder for them to find out where or who is running those sites.

Maybe they're running the other three. :-p

<comment><USER9> Strictly speaking it's a joint venture with the CIA :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can disagree with current drug laws and desire a change, you can say that the actions the FBI has taken made the situation worse and be correct with that, but you can not blame the FBI for doing so, because they are just doing what they are expected to do given the current laws.

<comment><USER11> Why are those who follow immoral laws not accountable?

<comment><USER12> There are "immoral laws" and there are "immoral laws." Mandatory female genital mutilation is an "immoral law." Making drugs illegal might be bad policy, but I don't think it rises to the level of immorality.

The fact is that drugs have externalized effects, whether you're talking about peer pressure to engage in drug use, crack babies, broken homes, or drug addicts committing crimes to feed their addictions. It's a pretty widely- accepted that society has a right and legitimate interest in policing things that have externalized effects. It may be the case that it's futile to make drugs illegal--that criminalization creates worse societal harms than drug use, but that doesn't make the laws immoral because there is no denying that drug use does in fact cause societal harms. Drug laws are in that sense no different than gun control laws or liquor laws. They may or may not have the intended effect, but it's hard to deny that they address real societal harms.

<comment><USER13> Reporters are getting their heads chopped off in Mexico. How about the morality of propping up violent drug cartels?

<comment><USER3> The Mexican cartels don't only engage in drug related crime; the idea that Mexico would become a peaceful utopia overnight if only you could buy crystal meth at your local supermarket doesn't have much evidence to support it.

<comment><USER13> Could you try making a principled argument in favor of prohibition? I haven't seen much evidence to support it.

<comment><USER2> That's a dramatic shift of the goalposts, isn't it? His argument was that ending prohibition wouldn't immediately make Mexico a safer place. It wasn't that prohibition was itself an intrinsically good idea.

<comment><USER13> A dramatic shift of goalposts would be equating not having your head chopped off with utopia.

His argument was not that prohibition wouldn't end immediately, it's that "The Mexican cartels don't _only_ engage in drug related crime".

This is a correct statement. Cartels also profit from sex prohibition, but I'm not sure why this justifies anything. Hence my request for a principled argument. Maybe you can help out.

<comment><USER2> That's a very uncharitable summary of the comment you replied to, and also a stretch, since you're the one introducing "utopia" in the the discussion.

I have an easier time mounting a principled argument against prostitution than for drugs. Here it is:

Adults in western societies compete with other adults in the market (in its broadest sense). You can see this, for example, in every job interview.

Usually, competition is benign.

Some forms of competition are not benign. We've decided for example that the competitive tactic of cornering a market and using that position to fix prices is malignant.

As a public policy matter, we allow the market to operate freely except in those cases where the competition becomes malignant.

As a public policy matter, we've decided that it's malignant to allow the form of competition where the winner is the person most willing to compromise their sexual integrity.

We can do that even while understanding that different people have different notions of what comprises "sexual integrity". That's because we recognize that if you allow competition based on sexual compromise, the market races to the bottom, and we operate at the lowest common denominator of "sexual integrity". The market punishes people for not compromising. That emergent property takes on the coercive force of public policy.

In the same sense as there's no _intrinsic_ moral problem with buying a specific amount of, say, lysine, but there is with buying all the lysine and fixing prices, there's no _intrinsic_ moral problem with exchanging money for sex, but there's an emergent problem with allowing people to compete based on their willingness to sell sex.

Put more simply: legalizing prostitution would be at least in some sense (and I think probably in a very powerful sense) coercive of poor women, and particular poor single mothers who have an extraordinarily powerful obligation to finance the upbringing of their children. Not selling your body would become a luxury. It's terrible public policy that allows that to happen.

It happens, obviously, regardless of the policy levers we pull. But society as a whole doesn't create the expectation that people can/should do that. That would stop being true if we allowed red-light districts in our cities.

Preemptively: you asked for a principled argument, by the way, not a dispositive one.

<comment><USER13> "the idea that Mexico would become a peaceful _utopia_ overnight if only you could buy crystal meth" \- Mike_hearn

Mike didn't just shift the goal post, he packed it up, shipped it via fedex, and had it smelted.

<comment><USER2> You're right. I'm wrong. I retract that part of my comment and apologize.

<comment><USER13> All good. Regardless I'm interested in reading your position on sexual prohibition. I'll take a closer look later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> """ More to the point, if you're buying drugs online you're not supporting local drug dealers and the crime and violence that typically accompany open air drug markets, particularly in inner cities. By cutting those sellers out of the equation, you're seeing a net reduction in violence overall.

<comment><USER15> "Buy local! Except for drugs!"

How do you actually get your drugs if you buy them on Silk Road? Do you have UPS bring the MDMA to your door?

<comment><USER16> > How do you actually get your drugs if you buy them on Silk Road? Do you have > UPS bring the MDMA to your door?

Yes. Typically it comes in "stealth" packaging to prevent it being detected en route. If it wasn't for tor being so slow it would be basically the same flow as ordering something off amazon

(or so I'm told)

<comment><USER17> There's a bit of added friction on the Bitcoin end as well, don't forget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One can only hope that for the coming decades (not years) that those who put such policies in place (and those who continue to enforce them) will be rotting in the ground, and more forward-thinking people will begin to realize the irreversible damage the War on Drugs has caused (and continues to cause), and start to undo such shit policies. Hopefully that wasn't too much of a run- on sentence.

</comment><comment><USER19> The real "more dangerous" argument is that the next gen sites will be even better, better hidden and more secure. They will evolve. So we will be in a situation where they will have to crack on everyone rights to bust this darkernet (situation I don't like), and with the way the security agencies are acting lately I doubt that they will think twice about it.

<comment><USER20> I'm a bit confused as to what the alternative is from their perspective. If they infiltrated the site, and it was doing things that are illegal, they'd be horribly negligent to not act on it. It would be the equivalent to the "Fast and Furious" scandal when spun by news agencies. We can disagree with the morality of drug laws (I think they're horribly misguided and incoherent), but what else can they do?

I think the best we can hope for is that they do the job we asked them to through the laws we put in place without violating other laws we put in place to protect civil liberties. If they're doing that (...) then it seems like this was their only ethical* choice.

Assuming they're following the laws protecting civil liberties (...), the decision on whether or not the upside of shutting down a few markets balances the downside of hardening the others is way above their pay grade.

* where ethical is defined as I imagine the individual law enforcement personnel are obligated to view it

<comment><USER21> If enough investigators and enforcers started to kick up a fuss or outright refuse to enforce the current drug laws I bet we'd see change pretty damn fast.

A lot of them would lose their jobs first, but if they were principled enough to take that stand... we'd be in a better place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is likely an erroneous argument with little evidence to support it. Violence between street dealers and drug consumptors is unlikely to be the largest source of drug related violence. After all, if the street dealers started killing their custies than no one would buy from them. It's bad for business.

Instead, most heinous drug violence happens between cartels and gangs at the levels of production and [major] distribution [pipelines]. These darknet markets are usually filled with well off youth buying drugs for themselves and their buddies who alternatively would have been unable to source the drugs or would have texted their neighborhood dealer to meetup in a McDonalds parking lot.

</comment><comment><USER23> Slightly off topic but did anyone else find it weird/funny that in the first graph showing total listings by drug, alongside more "official" names for substances like MDMA, LSD, and amphetamine, they listed "weed"?

I mean...I understand using common terms that have become de facto names (like "marijuana" instead of "cannabis") but "weed"? That's like making a list with Morphine, Oxycodone, PCP, and Blow.

I dunno...maybe it just tickled my "one of these things is not like the other" sense since the list wasn't all slang terms but rather more accepted labels with a single street/slang name.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands This reminds me of back in the 1980's when the government was knee deep in breaking up the mafia.

Several academics suggested it was a bad idea because the Mafia kept a lot of the other gangs and cartels in line since they ruled so much territory. By dismantling the larger mafia families, they were unknowingly giving free reign to a lot of the smaller street gangs who openly advocated violence and couldn't handle all the power they were being given.

</comment><comment><USER24> None of this is research it's gut feeling spewed by an effected individual. It's easy to say that online marketplaces reduce street violence but with no research to back it up it's meaningless. Prohibition can be detrimental to the society around it but you can't solve the problems with gut instinct.

<comment><USER25> Just because it's an online website hosted on Tor doesn't make it completely unique. We've had black markets before, and we have research on what black markets do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I doubt the FBI cares, lets not forget that for a long time they put a blind eye on organized crime (Mafia etc) while spending 100% of their resources looking for communists in every bush.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not sure I agree. Nobody is putting that genie back into the bottle no matter what they do & by extension this supposed "benefit" is also not affected imo.

</comment><comment><USER28> How the _Washington Post_ these days seems to have become _random_ (in the excellent sense that Bill Gates uses the term).

<comment><USER29> > in the excellent sense that Bill Gates uses the term

Which sense is that?

<comment><USER28> Random is his worst put down -- someone who is consistently wrong actually conveys information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> _Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus!_

</comment><comment><USER31> This is why "law enforcement" is a bankrupt concept. It does not care about safety or rights. It is a tool for kings.

</comment><comment><USER32> "A strong argument can be made..." but the OP never does such a thing nor contextualize it, so linkbait it is.

The title is breezed over, as a topic, in the article. Looks more like WP blogger likes to get high and is miffed.

<comment><USER33> Cool _ad hominem_ , bro.

<comment><USER34> Not true - its the content vs the title that's being criticized. Which strikes to the heart of what 'linkbait' means. Or is calling out linkbait considered 'ad hominem' and thus gets a free pass now?</comment></comment></comment>


0 A.D. Open source equivalent of Age of Empires - <AUTHOR> http://sourceforge.net/blog/zero-ad-potm-june-2012/

<comment><USER2> Here: <http://osgameclones.com> \- with "0 AD" included!</comment>


Ask HN: Would you join YC primarily for publicity? - <AUTHOR> Say you have a product you have built already and you don't really need money to get your product complete.
Would you join YC just because the publicity might help you grow? <comment><USER2> Not a YC alumni, but I've always believed the single most powerful benefit of joining YC would be the connections and PR opportunities involved.

So to answer your question... yes.</comment>


An Introduction to Deep Learning for Language Modeling - <AUTHOR> http://ofir.io/Neural-Language-Modeling-From-Scratch?a=1 <comment><USER2> these lectures at Oxford on the subject (by some research scientist it deepmind, no less) are some of the best spent time in my career

[https://github.com/oxford-cs- deepnlp-2017/lectures](https://github.com/oxford-cs-deepnlp-2017/lectures)

<comment><USER3> Are they better than 224d at Stanford?

<comment><USER2> definitely more advanced. they don't cover neural nets 101 like cs224d does, so they have more time to do advanced subjects like neural machine translation, neural Turing machines and question answering in the last courses.

honestly i would just watch both, and start with cs224d, but if I would have to pick one, it would be Oxford's.

<comment><USER4> Also, check out Graham Neubig's NN for NLP class at CMU: [http://phontron.com/class/nn4nlp2017/schedule.html](http://phontron.com/class/nn4nlp2017/schedule.html) It covers a lot of current stuff. The class is still running, so not all videos/materials are there yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is my listicle about Deep Learning for NLP [https://github.com/brianspiering/awesome- dl4nlp](https://github.com/brianspiering/awesome-dl4nlp)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm making a Chinese-English parallel translator.

[https://pingtype.github.io](https://pingtype.github.io)

My boss asked me to take CS231n about Deep Learning, and I decided to put some of my Chinese data into the same tools (Word2Vec) to see how it performed.

Honestly, it sucked. Was that my bad coding (very possible). Or is it because the examples are cherry-picked to work well with English? Can someone recommend a tutorial of Deep Learning for languages that are not English?

<comment><USER7> Try stuff from Baidu. They claim good performance in Chinese.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has language modeling achieved something that can pass a Turing test yet for various audiences?

<comment><USER9> Simply, no.

Most of big advances in the past five years have been around Natural Language 'Parsing' of unstructured information into structured information (this is what Deep Learning is _very_ good at, so far at least); classifying unstructured utterances into structured intents, mapping unstructured utterance 'questions' to unstructured answers in a corpus (fundamentally similar search), literal parsing of utterances to shallow or deep (semantic) parses, and so on. The thoroughly end-to-end, multi-modal and multi-scoped task of participating in a conversation remains largely unsolved. As any non- primitive interaction with Siri or Alexa should indicate. Word of the day is "brittle".</comment></comment>