Fig – Crowdfunding for video games - <AUTHOR> https://www.fig.co/ <comment><USER2> Huh, I was wondering if this was legal (seems like an unregistered securities offering, which has semi-strict requirements even after 2012) and then read this at the bottom:

> The securities offered by the issuers on the Site (the "Securities") may be > sold only to (A) investors who are (i) "Accredited Investors" as defined in > Rule 501 under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities > Act"), or (B) certain eligible investors who are not "U.S. persons" as > defined in Rule 902 under the Securities Act, or (C) otherwise eligible to > invest in Securities as discussed elsewhere on the Site

I'm assuming C) covers general crowdfunding investors but I also thought that you still had to check net worth/etc. which I didn't see going through the site anywhere (though admittedly I did a very cursory glance).

<comment><USER3> As long as they don't do any advertising they should be okay. But if a single non-accredited investor lands on their website as the result of clicking an ad, the law has been broken.

<comment><USER4> "But if a single non-accredited investor lands on their website as the result of clicking an ad, the law has been broken." \+ invests. Right? Otherwise, AVG which is all over social media would be at fault.

<comment><USER3> Soliciting investment from non-accredited investors is illegal. I learned this from an attorney who specializes in securitization when I was exploring doing a crypto business. It was also explained to me that local angel investing groups exist pretty much for this reason. They create a semi-private network of accredited investors which can be used by the local community to solicit capital in a legal way.

<comment><USER5> You don't have to "actively" seek investment from non accredited investors for it to be illegal. So a crypto currency could still absolutely be subject to action from the SEC even if they only had a "invest now" option on their website without promoting it . It's just that the SEC doesn't care as much and focuses more on the big fish. Still, passively selling illegal securities is still illegal :)

Fig is legal because of a recent crowdfunding law that made it possible to buy equity while funding a project. I think the website was created right after the law passed too, but maybe my memory is fuzzy here

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I guess I am a bit curious as to why this is being posted now since Fig has existed for a while. People talked about it and the fact that the founders of it used it for funding of Psychonauts 2. It definitely has had some success stories such as What the Golf? which is available on Apple Arcade already and I found quite fun. Outer Wilds and to a lesser extent Pillars of Eternity 2 are also games that seem to have been successful that used the platform.

<comment><USER7> It's interesting that Fig.co hasn't been much of a topic at all on HN; only 6 submissions from the domain over the years, only one with more than 20 upvotes (the current thread being the second fig.co submission to reach that many upvotes)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=fig.co](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=fig.co)

(Incidentally, a Docker-related tool called "Fig" got 160+ upvotes 6 years ago; didn't see any discussion threads about Fig.co when doing a search: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7132044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7132044))

<comment><USER8> They started off with some big sequels (Pillars, Psychonauts) but I don't think they've had any big names since then.

<comment><USER9> It's also interesting that they _might_ not have any nearly as big in the future, as interestingly Microsoft has purchased almost all of the developers (Obsidian, inXile, Double Fine) that had major Fig funded projects. (They did not purchase Fig itself though.) It's fascinating that most of the biggest dividends so far paid to Fig investors have been from Microsoft buy outs.

<comment><USER8> Double Fine and Obsidian?? Wow I missed that news.

<comment><USER9> Xbox Game Studios has been on a really interesting developer growth and M&A spree the last couple of years, in response to allegations that the Xbox One did not have enough first/second party exclusive titles compared to the PS4. They've made it a big part of their E3 announcements both of the last two years. They've been honoring existing publishing agreements for the most part, so it'll be months to years before it's obvious how much Microsoft has changed the landscape. (It's why Gearbox still published Compulsion's We Happy Few and Obsidian's Outer Worlds, for two instances, and per-Fig requirements/expectations Psychonauts 2 won't be Xbox exclusive but will probably be Double Fine's last title to not launch Xbox exclusive.)

(It's also partly fascinating because inXile and Obsidian have bad blood between each other and now they are both owned by Microsoft. Microsoft has said they'll keep them separated.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have only ever funded one project on Fig, and I regretted it. The developers missed their release target by several years, which wouldn't be that big a deal except that they were also pretty poor communicators for a lot of that time. Then they went Epic exclusive right before release.

I'm not saying this reflects badly on Fig per-se, just crowdfunding in general. I'll never do that again.

<comment><USER11> Apart from Humble Monthly, I think maybe all but one game I've bought this year was Epic exclusive. Unless Valve decides to get off it's monopoly laurels, I would expect that to be the new default in PC game launches going forward. Epic's offer is just so much more compelling than Valve's. And it sounds like they should have the tools to roll out onboarding a lot more games ready this year, so they'll probably have a large wave of non-exclusives as well.

I would always assume anything you crowdfund will disappoint you in some way. Plans change. When you crowdfund, expect the general direction, not the exact outcome.

<comment><USER12> What is Epic's offer?

<comment><USER13> 88/12 revenue split vs Steam's 70/30\. But you also get more visibility from being on a less crowded, less junky storefront.

And although it's unlikely to continue too much longer, Epic has set an interesting precedent with funding $10-off coupons during sales out of their own pocket. If you're at the classic $15-25 indie game price point, there's a nice possibility there for your customer to get $10 off and you to still get your full cut.

<comment><USER11> And all of that is before you mention their incentives for timed exclusive launches, which I believe often amounts to a revenue guarantee on your projected sales, and I think they deliver it up front.

So a cash-strapped game developer can go into the final stages of their game launch pre-paid and knowing they're already fiscally on track before it's even out. For indies that's a no-brainer.

<comment><USER14> Interesting phrasing, as indies aren't getting onto the storefront at all without accepting timed exclusivity. It's not an option that can be taken, it is mandatory to be on the storefront unless you have enough clout to tell Epic to shove it (CDProjekt Red).

That's assuming of course that Epic chooses to accept your game in the first place. My major issue with discussions regarding the EGS is that everyone discussing it talks as if every developer has access to what it's offering, which is not the case even in the slightest.

<comment><USER13> Maybe not the exclusivity part, but it being a curated platform is very much a win from the consumer's point of view. Being good enough to be on the EGS actually means something in an age when anyone can ship their garbage on Steam or itch.io or any number of smaller storefronts.

<comment><USER10> Speak for yourself, I happen to like the idea that there isn't some arbitrary gate keeper determining what is and isn't good enough to be on their store. I'll decide what is worth my money thank you very much.

<comment><USER13> Sure, and Steam exists for that. But that's also why it's clogged with thousands of shovelware GameMaker titles, porn games, and downright scams. Discovery on Steam is completely broken.

The EGS is much more akin to a console ecosystem. You don't have to use it, except perhaps for the occasional exclusive. But lots of people feel that there is value there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Per-game fractional equity stakes are something I am also considering for my own endeavors. I think it makes sense for rapid release schedules, where you plan to build the "factory" that can ramp a dedicated pipeline of hypercasual games with in-game monetization on a predictable and speedy timeframe

It would be interesting to explore 100% crypto smart contract solutions to this. I know a couple of years ago a lot of people were interested in fractional ownership for real estate development. But I am not sure what if it went anywhere

<comment><USER16> I'll be honest here. I can't tell if this is satire or not.

<comment><USER17> I really wish the hypercasual trend would go away. It's closer to slot machines with ads than to Tetris, and I think games as a medium are worse-off for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The book "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels" mentions Fig. It was started by several gaming industry developers/producers saw the success that Kickstarter offered the gaming industry.

</comment><comment><USER19> Obviously Kickstarter doesn't give backers an ROI, but beside that, what's wrong with using Kickstarter as the Kickstarter for video games?

<comment><USER20> Kickstarter asks the community to shoulder the risk of development -- you put your money in, with explicitly no guarantee that you'll get a game out of it (just a guarantee of a good-faith effort to put the game out), much less a good game.

As much as the big publisher model trends towards games that feel somewhat alike and tend to chase trends, it moves the burden of risk onto an entity that's designed to assume that risk.

<comment><USER21> Unless I'm missing something, Fig's model also asks the community to shoulder the risk. The only substantial difference is that with the Fig model the community also shares in all of the potential upside, whereas Kickstarter offloads the risk, but caps the maximum upside at getting the game you backed.

<comment><USER22> To be clear, fig also provides the Kickstarter model alongside its investor model. So you don't have to choose one platform over the other in terms of how you want to risk your money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here are the SEC Edgar filings for Fig- no need to speculate what is being offered [https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&C...](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001658966)

</comment><comment><USER24> The investment portion is an interesting idea. What sort of legal mechanism are they using for this?

<comment><USER25> It's standard accredited investor stuff. You can't invest unless you have sufficient wealth/income to be an accredited investor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> i was one of those who funded pillars of eternity 2 through fig. It turned into a dud, the game didnt sell well. I took a 50% haircut.

the actual mechanics were all onboard. Private shares were held using computershare and proceeds paid out in dividends.

</comment><comment><USER27> Thanks. I was wondering why this didn't exist already. T-shirts/in game items/early access never interested me.

</comment><comment><USER28> The lack of any mention of how big a share Fig has does not elicit trust.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a serious platform, I wish it can be success in the future!

</comment><comment><USER30> Neat. I reserved to fund for $2k on Homeworld 3. This sounds cool.

</comment><comment><USER31> Product hunt for indie games? Beautiful.</comment>


Twitter Settles With FTC - <AUTHOR> http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2010/06/twitter_settles_charges_by_ftc.html

<comment><USER2> From the FTC website, the list of "reasonable steps" that twitter (and really, any web app) should have taken:

* requiring employees to use hard-to-guess administrative passwords that are not used for other programs, websites, or networks;

* prohibiting employees from storing administrative passwords in plain text within their personal e-mail accounts;

* suspending or disabling administrative passwords after a reasonable number of unsuccessful login attempts;

* providing an administrative login webpage that is made known only to authorized persons and is separate from the login page for users;

* enforcing periodic changes of administrative passwords by, for example, setting them to expire every 90 days;

* restricting access to administrative controls to employees whose jobs required it; and

* imposing other reasonable restrictions on administrative access, such as by restricting access to specified IP addresses.

[<http://ftc.gov/opa/2010/06/twitter.shtm>]

</comment><comment><USER3> So the FTC reads about horses escaping, tells the farmer to close the barn door, and reports that as a successful enforcement action. Woohoo, your tax dollars at work!

Twitter didn't need any federal regulator to tall them to improve their practices; the embarrassment of the well-publicized incident -- and their continuing growth as a prominent target -- gives them all the motivation they need.</comment>


Protein tangles linked with dementia seen in patients after single head injury - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190905103013.htm <comment><USER2> People are also trying to figure out whether general anesthesia results in these same Tau tangles (with results still mixed: it could be that it is mostly due to hypothermia that sometimes happens during anesthesia, not the anesthetic itself) in an attempt to explain why surgery sometimes results in "post-operative dementia" in elderly people.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3741335/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3741335/)</comment>


Uber vs. Lyft: From The Driver's Seat - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/life-learning/uber-vs-lyft-an-insiders-view-fb14ba0a3dbb <comment><USER2> I understand why Uber's culture might be less popular with drivers and I certainly wish they seemed less smarmy - to echo another commenter - but this description totally underscores why I prefer Uber to Lyft as a customer.

Nothing against Lyft per se (though getting hit on by drivers twice, including a text after the fact, my last trip to SF didn't help), but the "we're all friends" culture sounds ok on paper but when I'm paying for car service, maybe I'm just a bitch, but I don't want to be your friend.

I get there is a difference between liveries and ride sharing in some cities, I do. But I live in New York. I don't want to sit in the front. I don't want to bump your fist. I don't always want to talk (though I've maintained a diary of sorts of many of my favorite Uber driver conversations). I'k primarily using the app because I need a car and couldn't get a taxi. Having a warm and fuzzy relationship is fine, but most of the time I'm trying to do work on my laptop or iPad. As a result, I'm more incline to use the service that treats it as a business than a lark.

But I do appreciate that Lyft drivers feel more appreciated there. That's important. I hope Lyft continues to treat it's drivers well.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, you are basically describing a taxi service or professional driving service, word for word. The friendly, talkative atmosphere is exactly what Lyft is marketing towards. In fact, a comment directly below yours talks about how great the atmosphere is for them and how it feels like a true ride sharing service between friends.

One couldn't even argue the ride sharing between friends when you actively don't want to communicate with your driver....

<comment><USER4> It may be an introvert thing, but I find this similar to how I vastly prefer the self-checkout machines at the supermarket. I don't really want to expend the finite emotional energy I have on being fake-social with people I don't even know while I'm making a business transaction.

Although apparently Lyft is now available where I live, it's never even had the inclination to try their service (as a passenger) because I find actually meeting new people and having open-ended conversations with them quite exhausting and stressful. At least with UberX I am assured we can just be polite to each other and not say much.

<comment><USER5> There's a Bible proverb somewhere that says, "He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed." Sometimes it can seem like we only have a finite amount of emotional energy, but keep in mind the ways to refresh that store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a (full-time) driver for both: I am biased towards lyft - I make more money on their platform weekly, they take less commission, I have a good friend who works for lyft.

There is certainly a difference between the two, but the two corporate cultures are converging. The cutthroat competition, and possibly growth demands put on them by VC has forced lyft to 'play catch up' against uber in many ways.

It shows up in superficial ways: For example, especially hilarious was the week that uber's and lyft's driver-side UI for accepting and completing rides swapped (uber went from tap and confirm to swipe in/swipe out; lyft went the opposite way).

Lyft communication with drivers, while always upbeat, is often very very slow and occasionally they are borderline negligent in dealing with pay issues.

And as is always the case, it's very difficult to measure the supply and demand, and so in my market at least there is a gross oversupply of drivers; as the drivers tail off and stop driving because they aren't making money, lyft finds itself needing to go on a hiring drive before major events (halloween, etc)... And then everyone shows up on the road for the few weeks after that and takehome goes sharply down.

I have doubts lyft will ever get caught in a major dustup like Uber did with its executive-level idiocy, but it's not a perfect company, and there are certainly more points of similarity (in bad ways) between the two companies than this review points out.

Still having said that, I do like contracting with lyft. It's (and to a less extent uber) given me runway for setting up my nonprofit and I'll be launching a for-profit after I move up to the bay area next week.... While we're seeking capital for it, I'll be lyfting around, if you use lyft you might see me.

</comment><comment><USER7> This post references its original parent in Pando Daily. I'm surprised there is no disclosure in Pando Daily that investors in Pando Daily such as A16Z, Founder's Fund, Peter Thiel are also investors in Lyft. I think it is only fair that every post in Pando Daily should carry that disclosure so that readers are fully aware of the connection. Why isn't this not called out? I just read a post in Medium which is rightfully questioning the motivation of these media posts absent the disclosure. [https://medium.com/@PersonofAwesome/buying-news-coverage- and...](https://medium.com/@PersonofAwesome/buying-news-coverage-and-crying- misogyny-in-the-ride-sharing-industry-dedeec300ae9) We need more transparency from the media outlets.

<comment><USER8> Pando typically discloses that it shares investors with Uber and Lyft. This one might have slipped through since it's a guest author.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have used Lyft probably close to 25 times (Is there a place I can see my ride history other than CC statements?) and only used Uber once so I won't try to compare the two but I will say this about Lyft:

Lyft was the first ride-share program to come to my city and I was a little disappointed as I had spent over a year hearing about how awesome Uber was. This feeling quickly disappeared after my first Lyft ride. It was so completely different than any taxi ride I had ever taken that I was taken aback. The whole process was super smooth and it really does feel like getting a ride from a friend. One of the parts I hated most about taxi's was paying at the end because they don't take CC's where I live (or if they do they hide the CC terminals) and so I always had to pay in cash and would often over tip (by rounding up to the nearest bill I had) just to get the ride over with faster. With Lyft I find myself wanting the ride to keep going and I genuinely enjoy talking to every Lyft driver I have ever had. I don't think I have ever had a conversation with a taxi driver that wasn't forced or awkward.

I get that a lot of people don't drive for Lyft as their main job (as do taxi drivers) and so it may be easier for them to be talkative and upbeat but it really does make all the difference. I gush about how much I love Lyft to all my friends and now they all use it and similarly love it. Everytime Lyft comes up in conversation everyone will talk about how great it is and how they love to use it.

Uber is now in my city but as I said I only used it once and I won't even begin to try to compare the experiences because the data set is way too small (hell, 25 rides with Lyft is probably too small as well). But from what I have seen from the outside looking in it's much more "professional" (I don't say that as a good thing) and buttoned up. I love how laid back Lyft drivers are and after reading this blog post it appears that Lyft as a company is this way as well. I wish Lyft the best of luck and will always try to get a Lyft driver before I fall back on Uber.

<comment><USER10> I find this really interesting. I prefer Uber at-least in LA. I have used both Uber and Lyft pretty consistently in the last year. My problem with lyft has been my extreme experiences that come at the expense of "being a friend". I have had rides from LAX with drivers asking me very private information like my religious beliefs. There was another guy who was talking about his relationships and hinting at his sex life. It was bizarre and funny in the way he said that he does not like to talk but lyft emphasizes on this social experience (and in my head I was like, dude please shut up.. i wont mind) I am sure these incidents can happen with Uber but so far I have never been creeped out even if I thought the drivers were rude or even reckless etc.

With lyft, I tend to sit on the passengers side; which kind of increases my sense of dread when I get weird drivers.

I hear this quite frequently on how awesome it is that Lyft emphasizes this social experience. But in my personal experience it has a (slight?) downside.

<comment><USER9> That is interesting. I would bet that Uber/Lyft are not homogenous across the US (or other other countries for that matter) but it may also come down to the fact that I am normally very open even with strangers. I feel awkward when there is silence and I won't fill it with awkward talking but I still don't like it. This is one of the big reasons I don't like taxis, I don't know how best to explain it but I guess the best way is I feel like I'm being rude if I just get in the car, tell them where I want to go, then stay silent the whole ride. I may be alone, or in the minority, for this but yeah... I also love to talk so that's why I quite like the Lyft friendly, sit-in-the-front-seat experience.

Thanks for chiming in with your experience! I'd like to hear what other people have to say about this as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems to objectively match my customer experience as well, though my subjective experience is different.

I wish Uber didn't feel like such a scummy bunch of people, because I'm not a particularly friendly/talkative/social person. I like that when I got into an Uber it seemed expected to not really interact with my driver. It's not that I'm "above them" or anything, though I certainly can see how their chauffeur atmosphere would appeal to those who appreciate that, it's just that they're a stranger, and I find that intimidating.

I'll probably keep using Lyft though, because all else being equal I'd rather be uncomfortable with my ride than uncomfortable with my decisions as a consumer.

<comment><USER12> They have to pretend that you're car-pooling, rather than just hiring a taxi. I don't like lying to people, so I prefer to tell them that I'm paying them to drive me from A to B.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> i was banned from Llyft and never given a reason except that "we take safety seriously". i remember always being an upstanding rider, but may have been a bit light in the tip category. tried to contact the company to see why i was banned but have been stonewalled. hopefully they don't start banning poor people, or some other group just because.

wish they would provided more transparency and have contacted the utilities commission in my state to share my concern.

<comment><USER14> You're not supposed to tip your driver. Sounds like you made somebody feel uncomfortable.

<comment><USER15> Lyft offers the option to tip, if I'm not mistaken.

<comment><USER16> I would presume, if they were smart, that they would not show how much tip you make per trip, rather per week, so you can't get annoyed at individuals. Doesn't work of course if they only give one ride, but do drivers ever do that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great copy from Uber: "We use driver ratings to know who are great partners are"

<comment><USER18> I also enjoyed how they admitted that they mislead drivers and riders by not displaying a rating lower than 4.55 even though the email said the driver's rating was less than 4.55.

<comment><USER19> I thought I was the only one who caught that. Very sketchy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article was OK, but the inclusion of affiliate links in the middle of the body copy made me feel like I was reading an ad in disguise...

<comment><USER21> Yeah it felt like an ad. I understand he wants to have some call to action in there. But might have overdone it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have experienced exactly this in SF. It may just be that I am overly friendly with strangers, but I opt for Lyft every time the prices are close (I'll take 1.5x Lyft over 1.25x UberX every time). The drivers are nicer and just generally more considerate. I've had drivers show me cool music and tell me great stories.

Then again I have friends who hate Lyft for the same reasons. They want to sit quietly in a black car and just get there. To each his/her own.

</comment><comment><USER23> The thing that seems crazy to me is that drivers are worried that they will lose their jobs to driverless cars. While I am sure this will be possible someday, even if it were 100% technically possible today (and it isn't) it would take a few years for all the driverless cars to be purchased.

I am sure someday it will happen. But if I were driving a car for a living I think I would be more worried about a car accident, illness, a recession..

<comment><USER24> When the CEO of the company you work for tells the world he can't wait to replace you and your fellow workers, it seems reasonable to worry a little bit. At a minimum, it's a bit disconcerting to be equated in value to a (not so distant future) machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> At least here in NYC, I see the same drivers driving for both UberX and Lyft. The only difference is that they have to attach the pink mustache in the front if they are responding to a Lyft order. In their mind, and mine, once I am in the cab, the company culture does not come afore as much as the human in the car. If he is talkative, he is - Uber or Lyft. If I am talkative, I am - wether Uber or Lyft. I have used both the services and I have had great conversations.

I find Uber and Lyft as great ways of being introduced to new cities. The drivers give me a shade of the city, that I might otherwise miss, just staying in business hotels and talking to the hotel staff, and business partners. I think of them as my "Lonely Planet" for X city.

</comment><comment><USER26> Reading this thread almost leaves me the impression there's room for a rideshare service that matches riders and drivers based on Myers-Briggs type...

</comment><comment><USER27> Great article, but the author seems way too desperate to get Uber and Lyft credit

</comment><comment><USER28> From my seat in back, the difference is tipping. I hate tipping. Increase fares 15% if you want, but not dealing with tipping was one of the nice things about Uber.

</comment><comment><USER28> I hate dealing with tipping, so I almost always go with uber.</comment>


Show HN: Zertcore5 – C++11 Server framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/warriorguo/zertcore5 <comment><USER2> I'm curious, why overload the & operator for stream functions? The STL use of >> and << is weird enough but at least we are all used to it by now. Or am I misunderstanding something?

Looks pretty cool overall, especially the RPC stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> So what kind of server is this for? What are the 'exciting' features?

<comment><USER4> It seems to be made for games. I see a nice focus on serialising/deserialising data.</comment></comment>


Advice from CEO of Blackboard - <AUTHOR>

I had a chance to meet with the CEO of Blackboard Michael Chasen last week and thought I would share some of advice/thoughts he gave me. (paraphrased)
--
When he was a graduate in an MBA program he invented a program that would allow students to upload papers over the Internet to their teachers.  He showed it to some schools and VCs and they wondered why anyone would need that.  However, a teacher thought it was a great idea, and Blackboard was born.
He tried to raise money from several VCs, but they turned him down.  "I went to 50 meetings with 50 different VCs and I can assure you VCs do not invest in companies that are looking for money to develop their product."
They found an investor that was a friend of a friend's brother's sisters' wife's husband…  they heard he might invest in the space, and kept harassing him until he said yes.
Early on they found another company doing the same thing (a bunch of graduate students as well) and they merged together doubling the size of the company.
For him it was all about sales.  To get started they gave away the product to 2 schools.  Then sold it super cheap to 2 schools.  From there they sold it to ten at full price, and so on.
If you can sell it once, you can sell it ten times, if you can sell it ten times, you can sell it 100 times.
A lot of teachers approach him and say "I really want to come work for you.  The online education space is the future."  He asks two questions: can you program?  Can you sell?  If you can't do either then you don't bring any value to the company.
The product is never finished.  When BB started to grow, they had competitors with better products.  It didn't matter.  They outsold the competition (and eventually bought them out.)
FB, Twitter, Google they won the lottery.  Companies can win the lottery too.  He had a friend that was a plumber and won 10 million in the lottery.  If he was going to do something that was advertising based, he would rather quit, become a plumber, and try to win the lottery.
The most important thing: sell, sell, sell. <comment><USER2> No doubt he can sell well, but how in touch is he with the customer-support side of the company? is he aware that his products are lousy and inspire anger among its users, and there are bright minds working hard to deliver a better product, and would have much sooner, if he didn't smack them down with patents?

<comment><USER3> Yeahh, I have to agree with this reply. He may be an impressive salesman, but that only seems to make up for the lack of anything remotely interesting about what he is doing for the product _now_. Sure, it was an innovative concept when it first came out, but after four years of using Blackboard during college, it feels like he missed the boat on improving a product. I wonder if Blackboard is so popular now because of a bandwagon-effect instead of because of being a great product. There's so many things they could be doing to solidify themselves as a truly awesome (and modern) product that they're not. They still feel like software we were using back in 2002. Salesmanship is great, but I wonder how hard you would have to press if you were offering something _awesome_. Who knows...</comment></comment>


CloudFlare Was Down Due To Edge Routers Crashing, Taking Down 785,000 Websites - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/03/cloudflare-is-down-due-to-dns-outage-taking-down-785000-websites-including-4chan-wikileaks-metallica-com/

<comment><USER2> First reading of this is cloudflare doesn't pre-stage their router upgrades. Or, if this was just a config change, they exceeded some limitation that they weren't aware of.

As a network engineer for small startups, I've made that mistake more times than I can count - but the excuse was always "no budget for lab gear to replicate our production environment" - I would think at cloudflare's scale, that wouldn't be an excuse that made much sense.

<comment><USER3> When you get to a certain size, there's a limit to how much you can pre-stage and test. Sometimes you just have to roll it into production and hope you didn't miss anything in the planning.

That doesn't seem to be the case here, but it's possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's our post mortem on what happened:

<http://blog.cloudflare.com/todays-outage-post-mortem-82515>

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like they are down again. I can get to their homepage but none of my sites that are hooked up to use them.

Update: back up. Looks like intermittent issues still.</comment>


How-to not log personally identifiable information - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-not-log-personally-identifiable-information.html <comment><USER2> That's an interesting approach that provides a USP for the search field. All the search companies I'm aware of use the personally identifiable data to sell stuff, provide a tuned experience or some element of both.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"DuckDuckGo doesn't log personally identifiable information (PII). We simply don't save it."_

I wish there was some way to verify that this was actually true.

Right now online privacy is stuck in the "trust us" era. Plenty of companies have privacy policies, but (as far as I know) there's no way for their customers to verify that the privacy policy is actually being adhered to.

On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence of companies being untrustworthy, incompetent, or both when it comes to information they've collected about their customers and users.

Hopefully, one day we can move in to the era of "trust, but verify."</comment>


GUI vs CLI: Operation vs Expression - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/8950163616/gui-vs-cli-operation-vs-expression <comment><USER2> "Expression" as the author defines it seems to be very narrow. Users of Photoshop or InDesign or Illustrator or Maya or Logic or Premiere Pro most definitly do express themselves, even though they are operating a GUI. GUIs are widely used for expression. Does the author want to suggest that CLIs would better serve the needs of all who want to express themselves?

<comment><USER3> _Users of Photoshop or InDesign or Illustrator or Maya or Logic or Premiere Pro most definitly do express themselves_

But in those programmes, the GUI is more like a keyboard of a CLI than the actual programme. The GUI controls are used as tools to use on the main area, the drawing area. A graphical programme like photoshop presents you with a massive empty whitespace for you to draw in. It doesn't tell you where to draw, or what colour to draw. It allows you choose any colour you want. Once you paint some red, you can then paint any other colour.

In this way the programmes you list confirm the "unbounded, "lack of constrains" and "newbie unfriendlyness" of the CLI.

A newbie doesn't know what commands to type into bash, and they don't know what colours to put down first in photoshop.

<comment><USER2> I don't understand. You also seem to think that the author picked a horrible analogy?

<comment><USER3> No, I think the analogy is apt. I think you're looking too shallowly and only looking at GUI/CLI, and thinking that Photoshop, being a GUI, fits into that world. Whereas Photoshop has more in common with CLI tools than many GUI programmes.

<comment><USER2> Wow. Just wow. What a completely absurd redefinition of what is a CLI and what is a GUI. No true Scotsman, anyone?

It is just not an apt analogy if it requires you to claim that Photoshop is more CLI than GUI. That's so freaking absurd.

Well, I guess I should have picked up on that when reading your last paragraph where you imply that everything that's hard to use is also a CLI.

<comment><USER4> Have you ever seen a professional autocad user? How would you define that? A blurred line between the terms CLI and GUI is not a True Scottsman. It's an observable reality.

<comment><USER2> I'm quite confused. Everyone seems to disagree with me by vehemently agreeing with me. As you yourself say: Expression is not reserved for CLIs. GUIs can allow for it, too.

I'm not trying to bring down CLIs here. What I don't like, though, is how the author of the article tries to bring down GUIs to prop up CLIs. That's just not necessary. GUIs are used by so many people to express themselves and it's patently absurd to claim otherwise.

<comment><USER4> Basically I am disagreeing with the validity of the discussion in general. There aren't agreed upon meanings for either term, so there isn't much point in going forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are we really having the GUI vs CLI holy war on HN? Here's how to deal with this question.

1) Design a nice DSL to express whatever it is you want your users to be able to command.

2) When you build the GUI, have all the gestures correspond to a particular DSL expression.

3) Add a shell where the user can type arbitrary expressions in your DSL (and for that matter, load files with DSL commands and execute them).

You're done. People who want a GUI have one, people who want a CLI have one, and there's a nice clean upgrade path from the GUI to the CLI. In fact, that's where this approach really shines: when a GUI user decides he needs to automate something, you can give him a single clear expression to type for each gesture he's used to making, and at first he'll probably just memorize those and use your product in exactly the same way with the CLI as with the GUI. Once he gets used to the CLI itself, he'll probably start tweaking the basic expressions you gave him and eventually feel comfortable enough to write his own. It's a nice security blanket for people who are basically learning to program to have a set of magic spells they're confident they can use no matter what.

<comment><USER6> This is basically exactly what Emacs does--every single GUI action, be it a keyboard shortcut, a menu item, a mouse click or even a touch gesture[1] maps directly and very unsubtly to an elisp function. This means you can go from just using Emacs like a normal text editor do doing really complicated things with elisp in a relatively straightforward way.

[1]: <https://github.com/greboide/emacs-gestures>

Coincidentally, I don't see how Emacs is a CLI program, even if it does have a text-only mode: the text-only mode just draws the GUI elements with text the way other programs draw them with pixels. Of course, it's a tool heavily optimized for power users, but that's a different story.

<comment><USER5> Invoking emacs from the command line is my go-to method to format code that I've generated from another program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not to overstretch the metaphor, but it's not that black and white. Something as simple-seeming as manual shifting on your car can change your experience of driving completely, making you much more aware and attentive of what's really going on between your ass and the road. It makes you a real part of the vehicle's decision making process. (The description I like is "It's like having a conversation with your car.")

And that from what seems like a trivial change, just a single extra degree of freedom; one that most find just an annoyance. To bring it back around, it's possible to bridge the gap, providing a powerful _and_ easy-to-use interface. But it will probably mean a lot of your users asking rightly, "But couldn't you just do that for me?"

The appropriate answer is something like, "Yeah. I could also just go to the store and get your groceries for you, and you'd never have to leave the house. Do you want to be cargo, or do you want to _drive_?"

</comment><comment><USER8> Funny that as an example of unbounded UI he shows _GUI_ version of Emacs. Overall I feel that his division between GUI and CLI is rather arbitrary.

</comment><comment><USER9> I like this, never thought of it that way.

If you're missing this aspect, musical instruments (to take one example that I sometimes wonder about) can easily seem designed to be "hard" to use. Compare a computer keyboard, with its clear labels, to the (to a newcomer) totally opaque grouping of the keys on a piano.

Now, I still think the keys could be labelled without any threat to the possibilities of expressing one's creativity, but it's a bit less annoying, having read this. :)

<comment><USER10> I think part of the resistance you'd meet to labeling piano keys is that you're highly unlikely to be able to play well if you depend on looking at the keys, as it slows you down too much to be able to play anything but the slowest pieces, whereas you can write well (though arguably not type well) on a keyboard while still looking at the keys.

As a teaching tool, labeling can work for both, but as a crutch for people who are less than proficient, labeling does not work well for someone trying to play the piano. There's a greater need for getting to a certain level of proficiency if you wish to play the piano than if you wish to use a keyboard.

<comment><USER11> You can always buy this with blank keys.

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/ImageGallery.aspx?CurImage=23-...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/ImageGallery.aspx?CurImage=23-830-001-TS&ISList=23-830-001-Z01%2c23-830-001-Z02%2c23-830-001-Z03%2c23-830-001-Z04%2c23-830-001-Z05&S7ImageFlag=1&Item=N82E16823830001&Depa=0&WaterMark=1&Description=Das%20Keyboard%20DASK3ULTMS1%20Black%20USB%20Wired%20Standard%20Model%20S%20Ultimate%20Keyboard)

But I learn to touch type with a regular keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Physical interfaces (and by extension, GUIs) cannot combine at will to create new behavior."

Or should it say that we don't yet have good enough GUIs that allow combination at will, to create new behavior? I don't think it is correct to say that this is impossible.

It's difficult to image what this would mean for GUIs, but maybe we could get some ideas from the DSL stuff for example Microsoft and JetBrain were doing some years ago.

<comment><USER13> We've already seen it over and over again: once a GUI is actually combinable, it may as well be a CLI or code.

<comment><USER14> Do you mean that once a GUI is combinable, it will be as hard to understand as CLI? That makes sense to me; infinite potential combinations will always be harder to understand than a limited set of actions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think he thought it all the way through, but I do think the author is onto something. A very important aspect of any kind of interface is to what extent it lets you combine and compose actions. But a) the line is not the same as the GUI/CLI line and b) it's a matter of degree.

A CLI could easily just be a set of five commands with no options that are roughly orthogonal. There is not much potential for constructing powerful, expressive commands, nor much of a learning curve. Just memorize the list. On the other hand, you probably don't need to look far in this thread to find an example of a GUI that allows powerful combinations of commands/effects/etc.

Depending in the design of the interface, there can be different degrees of combinability. I think the main point of the article should be (if it isn't) that what degree you want depends on the domain the interface is for, whether it should allow an infinite variety of actions.

Apparently this got lost in his stereotypes. By CLI he meant roughly Unix, and by GUI he meant a point-and-click GUI. There are many more possibilities in between.

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe there isn't much progression after you learn how to drive a car for normal people. :) Perhaps similar to lack of progression after learning how to email or browse the web for most users. Sure, you can only move the wheels, pedals and gear selector in certain ways. Isn't this equally true of the mouse, keyboard and guitar? And how is a steering wheel visually suggestive to those unfamiliar? Or the pedals? Sure, you can't pipe your car without making physical changes. But hacking a fuel-cut-defender is still hacking. I guess I just dislike using a car, guitar and EMACS as an analogy. Other than hardware vs software, they are very similar to me. I'm familiar with all three, and the one I'm least likely to modify is my guitar.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why not combine the two?

CLIs can benefit from autosuggest, a lot. I don't want to type too much or risk making typos. So they should suggest the legal choices, and order them by most common first (or maybe alphabetically). For those who don't like the autosuggest popping up automatically, you'd have a setting to establish a key combo to bring it up. Also, it's nice to underline possible spelling mistakes, and be able to hyperlink words to lists of related locations when I click on them.

Meanwhile, GUIs can include a "drop into CLI mode".

If we have a GUI that has a CLI mode with autosuggest, I would think this is the best of both worlds. Often times, I just want to design a COMPONENT, and then go right back to using the GUI.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Physical interfaces (and by extension, GUIs) cannot combine at will to create new behavior."

'Physical' doesn't seem to quite capture the distinction he's after.

He uses a guitar as an example of an interface where you can combine at will, and it's a physical interface.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great textual interfaces also try their best to externalize knowledge. That's part of the reason behind DSL's , Object-oriented-languages and good API design.

And because they're better at this, they're more useful than GUI's in many cases.

</comment><comment><USER19> Don't forget about <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1971200>

</comment><comment><USER20> FYI: Typography is totally fucked on win7+chrome <http://imgur.com/7Ad0d>

<comment><USER11> It was probably tested only in Lynx+Hurd.

/joke

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is not even wrong.

I don't know where to start. Sure, training people in Latex will eventually make them churn out better looking documents than Word, but the initial training costs and learning curve are going to be really high for the average office worker for who Word with the ribbon is overkill.

I am all for being against conventional wisdom, but surely someone would have done some experiments on these lines to unlock the creative expression of their employees? There are even a bunch of companies who allow and provide facilities for napping since they believe it helps be more productive. What's stopping them from switching to CLIs exclusively?

Also, he ignores the power of macros(VBScript is very powerful) and keyboard shortcuts in GUIs. Watch an occasional user of Office vs. a pro user and you can see the difference clearly. How many here can profess to know about _every_ feature or shortcut in Word or Excel? Just see [http://www.shortcutmania.com/Microsoft-Word-2007-Keyboard- Sh...](http://www.shortcutmania.com/Microsoft-Word-2007-Keyboard- Shortcuts.pdf)

or

<http://www.asap-utilities.com/excel-tips-shortcuts.php>

Same with IDEs, you can automate a lot of tasks if so choose to spend your time on it and rarely even use the mouse. You only hit a wall in the most simplest of applications(same as CLI), for complicated applications, there's a ton of room to explore.

It makes more sense to rant against programs/devices(browsers, pdf readers, watching movies) that encourage consumption versus the programs/devices that encourage creation(photoshop, IDEs, writing HTML in notepad). That's the only way the analogy of driving a car vs. playing a guitar makes any sense.

I can't fathom why the author is trying to turn that argument into a CLI vs. GUI argument that superficially sounds plausible but just falls apart with a little scrutiny.

Since the author has mastered the car UI, I am looking forward for him to execute this move [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CK94zCXsKI&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CK94zCXsKI&feature=related)

<comment><USER21> When you start scripting with macros or automation tools, you've just left the limits the GUI imposes for a CLI environment, with all that entails. That's not a disagreement, that conceding the point.

Nothing stops a "GUI app" from having a CLI or vice versa, though I observe that generally an app can be fairly cleanly identified as considering one or the other the "primary" interface, with the other a clear afterthought/second priority.

<comment><USER11> In other words, GUI apps can and do incorporate CLI elements. But CLI apps cannot incorporate GUI elements like click-to-select. So would it be accurate to say CLI apps are more limited than GUI apps? Or is the point in the article about forcing people to use CLIs so that they have to know about the more powerful features(or give up trying to use the program)?

Or does he mean it's a good thing to replace the car's interface with a bunch of strings like a guitar that allow you to steer, brake and accelerate and change gears and this will allow for more creative driving? As I said, the article is not even wrong.

<comment><USER21> Too strong. You've defined "GUI" as something that can include CLI elements, but then turned around and defined CLI as being unable to include GUI elements, so you end up in a tautological circle.

A "CLI app with a GUI" is something like emacs in X11 or gvim, where the GUI is clearly a second-class citizen/afterthought, but it is there. Alternatively, you can look at something like the various Linux apps for ripping DVDs, which are mostly nothing but GUI shells around various transcode and mplayer commands, and it shows. To the point that I once bashed one of them into doing what I wanted it to do, rather than what it wanted to do, by exploiting a command-line injection in the so-called "GUI" to inject a command-line parameter that superseded one of the earlier ones the program jammed in without asking me. (Subsequently I scripted up a simple rip that meets my usual use case, but the GUIs are nice when I want to save subtitles or something and it's harder than just one mencoder call.) Considered as a system, these are GUIs around underlying CLI apps that do the real work.

<comment><USER11> A GUI interface can include CLI elements because it is technically capable of showing a CLI interface.

If a CLI interface can include a GUI, can you use it over in a SSH terminal? Or on a Linux box without X(or the equivalent) and all it's bloat being installed? Or on Windows 2008 Server Core? You're pretty much redefining CLI at this point and cutting away some of it's advantages too, like being able to run on very low power devices like routers etc.

<comment><USER21> "If a CLI interface can include a GUI, can you use it over in a SSH terminal?"

Yes, you can use every bit of functionality in all the software I cited over SSH, you just don't get the GUI. (Excepting anything purely GUI-specific, like opening a new window in emacs, but that's a small set of targeted commands.) That's why I cited those examples as CLI apps with GUI overlays. I could cite some others, too, like fetchmailconf, a GUI for fetchmail that is optionally used for configuration of an otherwise fundamentally CLI app. Unix is full of these things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When people use #hashtags in Twitter is this like a command on the command line?

Do you think there was much debate at Twitter over whether users would be able to understand and effectively use #hashtags?

<comment><USER23> Great example. Before Twitter, Google had already begun the re-education of the masses to use text-oriented interfaces with things like "label:" in Gmail search and "filetype:" in Google search.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there anything like HN for creatives? - <AUTHOR> Wondering if there are places with updates about things like photoshop and cameras or video/cinematography things and a place for people to show off what they are working on (and they are serious about their craft rather than just instagram) <comment><USER2> [https://www.designernews.co/](https://www.designernews.co/) ?

<comment><USER3> not very active

<comment><USER4> I visit a few forums that are extremely slow. I recommend it. There's a stronger local culture to these places, since you can get to know individual posters, whether by username or style. There's more room for slow, drawn-out conversations that can take place over days or weeks, which you can drop into and out of without losing the thread, and you have a chance to engage in one- on-one conversation with individuals without having to resort to DMs or a chat system.

<comment><USER3> Everyone on that designer web forum smells their own farts. It's not local culture it's seclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> ArtStation, CGSociety, and various art subreddits.

/r/computergraphics, /r/animation, /r/photography, etc.

Recently I've opened /r/DigitalArt. It's a small community now, but you're welcome to join =)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure but I'm always impressed to see the activity in my preferred art - music - on HN. I think part of the appeal to HN is the engineer/logic mentality applied to most of the discussions.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.webdesignernews.com](http://www.webdesignernews.com)

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://medium.com/topic/digital-design](https://medium.com/topic/digital- design)

[https://medium.muz.li/](https://medium.muz.li/)</comment>


The Myth of Chinese Super Schools - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/myth-chinese-super-schools/

<comment><USER2> I am from China and I can't agree more. The mass-examination system seems to promote equality, yet the ignorance of individual differences led to the failure of discovering specialized talents, who are potential leaders and innovators of the future.

Bertrand Russell already pointed this problem 90 years ago([http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13940](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13940)), but the problem still remains till now.</comment>


Angels clip wings of entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://milwaukee.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2007/05/21/story1.html <comment><USER2> Here's the Google cache, in case you get stuck at the paid registration screen: [http://220.127.116.11/search?q=cache:hx6IysW2pqMJ:boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2007/05/21/story1.html%3Fb%3D1179720000%255E1464211+Angels+clip+wings+of+entrepreneurs&hl;=en&ct;=clnk&cd;=1≷=us](http://126.96.36.199/search?q=cache:hx6IysW2pqMJ:boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2007/05/21/story1.html%3Fb%3D1179720000%255E1464211+Angels+clip+wings+of+entrepreneurs&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone else noticed this trend?

<comment><USER3> No, although it's rather difficult to spot national economic trends just through qualitative observations. :-)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best WFH Mic? - <AUTHOR> I just bought the AirPods pro thinking they might sound half decent for zoom. They work ok on the iPhone but terrible on my MacBook Air (known issue, apparently).
What mic should I get?
Yeti? (sounds great but bulky and need to have it in front of my face)
Rode Smartlav? Looks neat but wired to my shirt?
Some kind of headset?
I'm not a podcaster but want my voice to sound decent. My home isn't a soundproof studio, and occasionally my 6 year old will bang something in his room nearby or a police car buzz outside.
I got lost with Youtube videos of vloggers, youtubers and sound pros comparing Db floors and frequency response rates...
Thank you wise hackers! <comment><USER2> Don't rule out the Yeti for its size. I bought one several years ago and rely on it for most of my audio/video calls. It has awesome pickup, mine sits about 18" away from my face on a monitor stand (just to the side of my monitor). Doesn't show up on the camera. You need to play around with the different pattern modes to determine which works best for the space you're using it in.

I also have the apparently discontinued Blue Snowflake USB Microphone, which is portable and has a clip to mount it on a laptop. Seems to be available from third parties on Amazon though. Great if you need to have a mobile mic.

</comment><comment><USER3> My favorite headset is

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013F4LJTI/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013F4LJTI/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

It is a bit expensive but it systematically deals with every annoyance I've had with other headsets. Headset mikes are particularly good for "noisy environment" being the problem, although the best thing for legibility is going to be something like the Yeti in a soundproof and anechoic room.

</comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone complained to you about the quality from your built-in microphones? Are they facing towards you? I'd be wary because this is an optimization for other people's listening pleasure, on conference calls, and you might not be able to improve their experience very much anyway.

<comment><USER3> That's a real point. There are many reasons why people might not hear you well on a conference call: you can control some of them, but not all of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Very good point.

There's no issue there for me. Maybe it's slightly vanity related but I'd like my voice to sound good.

Maybe I was listening to too many podcasts with interviews, but there's a huge difference if someone uses a good mic with a rich sound, or a crappy one with a thin sound.

I just feel like a richer sound will be much more pleasant for the other end and will project my real voice more accurately.</comment></comment></comment>


Where Is Steve Jobs? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/where-is-steve.html <comment><USER2> all i see here is idle speculation.

the tech press doesn't understand apple, because the company doesn't operate by the same rules as everybody else. jobs could have opted out of doing the macworld keynote because there's nothing interesting to announce, because he got into a fight with one of the conference organizers, because he's afraid he'd get booed for having announced that apple won't be at macworld next year, etc.

one part i'll agree with is that apple's fortunes are unhealthily tied to steve jobs. once he's gone, the company will be in for a world of hurt.</comment>


H: On heroin and harm reduction - <AUTHOR> https://nplusonemag.com/issue-24/essays/h/ <comment><USER2> Heroin is growing in use in the USA and Europe, but not where people think it is. I live in Allentown, PA a 120,000 city that outsiders consider to be a den of drugs. I grew up in Suburbia in Connecticut with the incredibly wealthy NYTimes headline in this article "Heroin in New England, More Abundant and Deadly.". I saw so much more drugs with the rich kids then I do in my neighborhood. The local high school that released a letter stating that heroin is being abused and a string of over doses are claiming the lives was not my inner city school district but the richest school district in our area, Parkland.

My wife is from West Virginia and that place is unbelievable in the amount of heroin use. [http://wvpublic.org/topic/needle-and-damage-done-west- virgin...](http://wvpublic.org/topic/needle-and-damage-done-west-virginias- heroin-epidemic). I am scared for my life all the time since I believe 20% of the people are high on something while driving.

I don't understand the draw but I can tell you that I can't trust my friends that got caught up in this stuff. They will steal and lie just to keep on this stuff. It is so sad to see after 20 years they still haven't beaten this beast even though they have spent tens of thousands of dollar on treatment and told that once beaten it stays dead unlike cocaine's psychological addiction.

After reading this article I have no idea where I sit concerning safe site or needle distribution centers or all the other treatments. I just feel bad for all the family and friends that are going to be hurt and abused due to this addiction cycle.

<comment><USER3> I think that as time goes on, a lot more of these medium sized communities where heroin and other opiate abuse is taking hold are going to have to make some decisions regarding safe injection sites and needle distribution.

To the community it should hardly be more than another office building or truck on the street, IMO.

It's certainly preferable to an ocean of used syringes in the gutters and unchecked spread of disease.

Then again, the NIMBY mindset hasn't changed at all over the years.

<comment><USER2> I usually pick up and throw away a random used needle once a year in the city.

I think no one sees this in the suburbs because of the ability to have more privacy there. BUT I was hiking in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains 10 miles form any dirt road and I ran into several used needles and a burnt spoon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In Maine we're dealing with it, on seemingly, epidemic levels.

I don't know how it was in the 80s and 90s, but in school it sure seemed like heroin was in the slums. This is absolutely no longer the case. The rise of Oxycontin and other pain killers being abused recreationally and having the steady supply slow to a crawl has led to more and more people opening up to the fact that heroin doesn't have the stigma it once did. It's no longer some devil drug that you inject into your arm with a dirty needle in some dark alley.

"It's the same as oxycodone? I don't have to inject it, I can just snort it?"

It's super easy for kids these days to be swayed to use it. "What do you mean it's 3-5 times CHEAPER for the same exact high?!" This is why heroin is in suburbia and rich neighborhoods, there's no longer a distinction, a dividing line, between heroin and "yuppie heroin" (pain killers).

Growing up in a relatively small town in Mass, I had never seen it, heard of it being sold, or known anyone (friend's friends/family, etc) to use it. Now, I know for fact it's big in the town. In fact, someone got arrested not that long ago for having a KILOGRAM of heroin and a KILOGRAM of cocaine, not two streets from where I grew up.

I support over the counter Narcan (I honestly can't see how some people don't...), I support safe injection sites with counsellors present, I support needle exchanges, and I support REQUIRING all pharmacies to sell needles to anyone who's over the age of 18.

The heroin epidemic needs to be treated as a health issue. We don't need to be putting every user we find in prison. Why not break the cycle? Why not figure out why they're using and try to help them?

I'm not sure if it's well known or not, but opioids in general are fairly rampant in the IT world. I help a friend (an ex-addict) run, what is essentially, an anonymous (online) NA meeting for IT professionals. We sometimes have 500 people in a single meeting. You'd be surprised the type of individuals that are addicts. When you make good money you can actually use and still have a job, still have a car and a home, etc.</comment>


Tarski's high school algebra problem - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_high_school_algebra_problem <comment><USER2> I remember being told about this when I was introduced to type isomorphisms. Sum types correspond to addition, product types correspond to multiplication and function types correspond to exponentiation.

In haskell types:

        * Either a b corresponds to a+b

        * (a,b) corresponds to a*b

        * a -> b corresponds to b^a

Update:

I forgot 0 and 1. I don't know what 0 would be in haskell. Think of 0 as a type that does not have a constructor. 1 is () (the unit type).

<comment><USER3> You can actually write an "empty" (ignoring ⊥) type:

        data Void

Apart from maintaining symmetry and keeping the type system elegant, this is also very useful when you want to use types as "tags", ensuring they cannot be instantiated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A little disappointing that it all boiled down to the lack of a way to handle a negative coefficient, but fun problem nonetheless.

<comment><USER5> Seems to me quite interesting that you need methods involving negative polynomial coefficients to prove statements that use only positive numbers.

Actually, it seems to be a concrete example for Gödel's incompleteness theorems: a very simple system can be used to make statements whose veracity can be proven only by using concepts outside the system.

<comment><USER6> Something similar: If you want to write down a formula for solving a cubic: ax^3+bx^2+cx+d = 0, for give a,b,c,d, you can't avoid using complex numbers. This is true even if you only care about cubics which have real solutions.

To clarify that last sentence, contrast it with the quadratic formula, which has no mention of the imaginary unit i. It's true that a quadratic with real coefficients might have only complex solutions, but you might just interpret that as having no solutions: once the formula tells you "take the square root of a negative", you know it has no real solutions.

Maybe this could be worked into something similar to the high school algebra problem, but with a list of axioms about real numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this just a special case of one of Godel's incompleteness theorems?

Roughly, the incompleteness theorems state that, in any sufficiently powerful, self-consistent, decidable mathematical axiom system, there are statements which are true, but cannot be proved. And "sufficiently powerful" means basically "including addition and multiplication." The high school axioms look like they're at least that powerful, so wouldn't it just be a direct application of Godel that such statements exist?

<comment><USER8> No, the question here is not "are there statements in _this axiom system_ that cannot be proved by this axiom system" (what incompleteness theorem says), but "are there statements about _the positive integers_ that cannot be proved by this axiom system". In other words, is this system of axioms equivalent to the axioms that define positive integers.</comment></comment>


PayPal Blocks Diaspora Fund Raising Efforts - <AUTHOR> http://www.techieinsider.com/news/11406 <comment><USER2> This is par for the course when dealing with PayPal, unfortunately. Many, many people have had the same problem -- some famously, like Notch with Minecraft. Even when you aren't dealing with significant sums (Minecraft had $750,000 tied up by PayPal), this still happens. Talk to enough Demand Media writers, for example, and you're guaranteed to run into one who's had to deal with PayPal's nonsense.</comment>


An open letter to GitHub from the maintainers of open source projects - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0 <comment><USER2> These open source projects certainly love the very high quality, free services Github offers them, until they start learning how the sausage is made.

ICE has done, and continues to do some terrible things. Horrible, horrible things; all legal things, but nonetheless horrible. But, frankly, if its legal, I am much less comfortable with Github's users subverting the US legal system by backdooring their moral code into products these legal entities rely on. Go to your senators. Go out and vote. Go protest. It's not that hard, but it is much harder than signing your name on a petition.

<comment><USER3> > But, frankly, if its legal, I am much less comfortable with Github's users > subverting the US legal system by backdooring their moral code into products > these legal entities rely on

I don't follow this logic. If it's legal, we should not take moral stances in our actions outside of political actions? Doesn't the concept of "voting with your wallet" expressly involve taking moral stances in ALL actions? Sure, the open source projects may not be paying Github directly, but I'm VERY uncomfortable with saying that money is the only way to take a moral stance.

The idea that there's some set of actions that should be categorically immune to moral reactions is...weird at best and feels pretty darn dangerous. Almost no one wants to make every decision an intense moral debate, but the OPTION should exist. Otherwise you just create places to foster corruption.

> It's not that hard, but it is much harder than signing your name on a > petition.

This feels like a false choice. Doing one doesn't mean the other is unavailable, and doing one doesn't mean you SHOULDN'T do the other. Indeed, if you think the stakes are high, doing both seems to be the best option.

<comment><USER2> They're threatening a boycott. They're not actually boycotting.

I'll start paying attention when they actually start deleting repositories. That's also when Github will start paying attention; they've gotten enough warning.

But no one will actually do that, because everyone who signed this but still has a community and a repository on Github is a coward. They love all the free stuff, and they'd love for Github to just do whatever they tell them to do, but without any of that icky hard work like migrating a community to someone with more aligned morals.

Prove me wrong. Delete your account, NOW. Please. Prove me wrong. No one will. Because all anyone ever does is whine; no one acts. Its so easy to sign your name and complain; its hard to actually Act.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a great time to start your own woke git service. So you have maybe 10-15 open source packages in your product, at a minimum. I guess we're at such an intolerant point now that all 10-15 of those companies political policies and viewpoints must align with your own - to use their _software /service_.

I guess we've politicized code now. Has anyone looked at the political system of discourse lately? Keep that shit out of code, or we're doomed as a profession.

<comment><USER5> "Keep that shit out of code", you say, while software services take millions of dollars in government contracts, and spend millions more lobbying.

Like ???????????

<comment><USER6> Taking a government contract is not the same as politicizing code.

<comment><USER7> To you. Peoples' politics are, definitionally, subjective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _At the core of the open source ethos is the idea of liberty. Open source is > about inverting power structures and creating access and opportunities for > everyone._

I think the core idea of open source is that code should be shared for free. Not shared for free (with people I politically agree with). By policing who can use software, the author's of this letter are very much going against the spirit of open source.

It should not be the position of the tool maker to dictate who can use the tool they create. Once you put it out in the world, people you don't agree with _will_ use your software (if you're lucky enough to have users that is).

I see no difference in slamming Github for having a customer certain activists don't like vs the MPAA cracking down on DeCSS.

<comment><USER9> Yes, the idea of liberty (for everyone to use free software regardless of intent) and the liberty of immigrants in the US to live without harassment and terrorism of their communities are indeed in conflict. So you have to choose one. By not choosing one, you're choosing the existing system -- ICE uses this software to accomplish these goals.

We're not trying to infringe on ICE/CBP's ability to use popular open-source software. We're simply asking some companies not to help them with support contracts.

Hope this helps!

<comment><USER8> As stated I choose the liberty of everyone to use free software regardless of intent.

> _By not choosing one, you 're choosing the existing system_

It's become quite popular to say that being ok with the status quo is a political position. And while I couldn't disagree more, I've always believed in free software and I'll proudly stand by that status quo as my political position if that's how others want to view it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I probably share political stance with most of the people signing this and it's a very interesting type of dilemma that I haven't thought quite through just yet but I think I disagree with this.

It's common for especially B2C corporations to have highly documented CSR policies. They will not work with suppliers that perform testing on animals. Or employ child workers. And they will not work with suppliers who have suppliers that do those things. The entire chain is potentially audited. I approve of this concept and I vote with my wallet.

This situation, however, is different. Whereas companies choose suppliers, they don't really _choose_ customers. At least by some definition, the customers choose them. I know that this gets muddy because sales, but still. And I don't like the idea that companies should start auditing their customers. What if some company that deals with ICE uses Github? Or say someone who used to work at ICE formed a company -- is that company in the clear? Doesn't seem like a viable direction to me.

</comment><comment><USER11> This was discussed extensively a couple days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21703631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21703631). Unfortunately it also turned into a flamewar with many users disregarding the site guidelines. Please read and follow those when commenting here, no matter how strongly you feel about political questions. Indeed, when strong feelings are present, that's when we need to follow them the most. That's the point of this rule:

" _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "

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

</comment><comment><USER12> Yikes! It's terrible that BitMover is doing things with BitKeeper which are against the interests of the open source community.

Someone should develop a distributed version control system...

</comment><comment><USER13> As a side note to the letter, it's interesting to watch how pull requests are used to add signatures _in alphabetical order_. That's actually a really interesting exercise to watch.

<comment><USER14> Shouldn't they have instructions on how send a pull request without a GitHub account? I'm already boycotting for an unrelated reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Honestly, who gives a shit? The whole free market deal everyone is preaching about should just fix the problem. Git is decentralized. If you have a political/ethical problem with Github, move your stuff to Gitlab or host it yourself. It's not a big deal. Although I share some of the feelings in that letter, Github is free to do whatever it wants and we are (still) free to take our business wherever we want.

<comment><USER16> GitHub is a near monopolist. Several large projects like Python have been moved to GitHub under eager participation of Microsoft employees.

Open source is no longer free, so we do not have a choice.

<comment><USER15> > GitHub is a near monopolist. Several large projects like Python have been > moved to GitHub

No. No no no no. Stop using Git like SVN. Fork the projects if you don't agree with the maintainers choosing to stay with Github. Don't ask nicely, write manifests, sign petitions, etc.. fucking act!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wonder if these social justice keyboard warriors know that most of the stuff at ICE that they are upset about happened under Obama. Where was the outrage then?

</comment><comment><USER18> An intelligent comment on there: [https://github.com/drop-ice/dear- github-2.0/issues/215#issue...](https://github.com/drop-ice/dear- github-2.0/issues/215#issuecomment-562239055)

</comment><comment><USER17> Letter forgot to mention all the killers and rapists ICE removes form USA and keeping America SAFE #498 [https://github.com/drop-ice/dear- github-2.0/issues/498](https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0/issues/498)

This issue makes a very good point!

</comment><comment><USER19> So many of these folks were forced by their communities of users to move to Github from their old, bespoke infrastructures. I can understand the bitterness.</comment>


US State Dept Issues Worldwide Travel Alert - <AUTHOR> http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/alertswarnings/worldwide-travel-alert.html <comment><USER3> As rare as this may seem, the State Dept. has issued four previous worldwide travel alerts [May - Aug 2011, Sep 2011 - Dec 2012, Aug 2013, Dec 2014 - <USER2> 2015]. This amounts to about 20% of the past five years.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love that there's a travel alert for the _planet_ , but not for American cities.

Lived in Boston for the last four years, was there during the Marathon Bombing. I'm now traveling within Europe, and am pretty 100% confident it's safer somewhere like Poland or Croatia than _any_ first tier American city.

But, really, who cares? Change of dying while commuting is catastrophic compared to a terrorist attack.

The Parisians had the right idea - day after the attacks, everyone fills up the cafes.

Which is the opposite of what we did in Boston - cower at home, while a couple kids with IEDs shut down an entire state.

Terrorists only win when the people they attack are chickenshit.

Each time the West gets hit, it gets a little harder to worry about the next one. Just like you might get into a car accident driving to work, some Islamist whackjob might blow himself up at a concert, market, or restaurant.

When the risk is _going outside_ and _doing things that involve other people_ , there's no different action to take as an individual. It becomes background risk.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is one of the least actionable and most poorly thought out travel alerts I've seen the Department of State hand out in quite some time. (Listing those three groups all in the same alert is just completely wild.) And the Department of State already issues travel alerts that seem more akin to someone's parents getting worried than real security risks.

Shameful. I want my government to be less afraid.

<comment><USER6> They go beyond just naming those 3 groups:

> Additionally, there is a continuing threat from unaffiliated persons > planning attacks inspired by major terrorist organizations but conducted on > an individual basis.

May as well just say, "We've just discovered that people can do bad things, at any time and for any reason." Random individuals are a "continuing threat" that might resolve by February 2016 when this notice expires. Really looking forward to the apparent cure for human nature they've got in the works!

<comment><USER7> The elevated-above-normal-levels threat from the named groups and individuals inspired by them is expected to be a temporary situation.

That doesn't mean that bad people doing bad things is a problem that is expected to be resolved.

<comment><USER6> But if attacks can "inspire" people, the very first attack that ever happened can inspire them in perpetuity, unless we can make the world forget the concept of violence. I do sort of see the point that successful attacks inspire copycats soon after, I guess it seems silly to name threats and then just throw in something that boils down to "or anybody else."

Also, that it implies the threat is uniform across the entire globe (except maybe lesser in Syria and Iraq? Since those are the only two locations that are named but not in connection with a previous attack. And, it says the bad guys are leaving those places, so they're becoming safer, right? /sarcasm) I had the notion that "there are bad things happening out there" from skimming the news, but thanks State Department for letting me know they might happen in "multiple regions"!

Meh, I guess maybe this is bureaucratically significant to someone (if some company has a policy to not travel when there's a State Department alert?) even if it contains virtually no information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ... Meanwhile, any American traveler is more at risk of being ran over by a bus on their way to the airport, than of being targeted by "conventional or unconventional weapons."

<comment><USER9> I never get this line of argument. Yes the probability of getting killed by a vehicle is perhaps higher based on Stats but this does not mean that we should not pay a bit extra attention to these travel advisories, right ? Why does it have to be a zero sum thing ?

<comment><USER10> Agree, it's about possible reduction of harm. A notice that cars crash is not going to stop people from using cars. A notice that foreign travel is not safe will deter some people.

<comment><USER11> > A notice that foreign travel is not safe will deter some people.

The problem is that foreign travel _is_ safe and all this fear-mongering is unjustified.

99% of people who travel to a foreign country are completely safe. Saying anything to the contrary is pure fear-mongering.

<comment><USER12> And it's a much higher number than 99%. This page[0] reports 68M exits in 2014... How many Americans have died travelling abroad due to terrorism in 2014? 5? 50? 500?

[0]: [http://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2014-O-001/index.html](http://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2014-O-001/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _U.S. citizens should exercise vigilance when in public places or using > transportation. Be aware of immediate surroundings and avoid large crowds or > crowed places._

This is really crazy text. It reads like, "U.S. citizens everywhere should scuttle like rats through alleys and sewers." I see little use in telling _every_ U.S. citizen traveling _anywhere_ to _always be on guard_. Humans just don't have this capacity for eternal heightened vigilance, nor do I think it's even healthy to ramp people up this way when their real change in _global_ risk seems very, very limited.

<comment><USER14> > "U.S. citizens everywhere should scuttle like rats through alleys and > sewers."

But sewers are where the Surgeon General tells me I'm at increased risk of contracting communicable diseases. And alleys are where the FBI tells me I'm more likely to be mugged or raped. Whatever are we to do?

<comment><USER13> This is precisely why you should never get your hopes up about results from a mouse study. (mods forgive me, I just couldn't help that. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Has the State Department issued a Worldwide alert like this before?

<comment><USER11> Yes, there have been 4 such alerts in the last 5 years alone.

They're really not a big deal and shouldn't cause anyone to avoid travel.

<comment><USER14> So if there are "worldwide alerts" all the time (which is true), and they're no big deal and you shouldn't do anything differently because of them, why have them at all?

<comment><USER11> Personally, I completely ignore them.

I think the main reason they're issued is political: it shows they're doing "something" and if there _is_ another attack soon it gives them political cover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am leaving for Paris tomorrow. Trip was planned a few months ago. We are still going but this alert is a bit concerning.

<comment><USER17> Paris probably haven't been as safe as it is now, for decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What, exactly, is the point of these vague and overly-broad travel alerts? To try and kill the tourism industry?</comment>


freeSoC and freeSoC Mini - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/18182218/freesoc-and-freesoc-mini <comment><USER2> To sum up the pain points that this is fixing:

\- More pins, enabling more input/output. While there are some projects that only need a few pins, larger ones like big interactive light installations benefit from more

\- Almost all pins are analog or digital compatible, with a few high current digital ones

\- Compatible with Arduino header boards

\- Better IDE

\- Included ADC (two types, one can drive CD-quality audio), DACs, comparators, op-amps for bufferring, capacitive sensiving. These remove the need for a lot of external stuff to make simple and common things.

As someone who already has a stack of Arduinos, a PIC programmer, and a handful of Raspberry Pi's... this is still something that is unique and relevant. Pretty awesome and I hope it makes its funding goal.

<comment><USER3> Hey All, Jon Moeller here.

Thanks for all the support so far, I've received just under 20 backers from direct referrals from here, and I really appreciate it.

This is a great summary of the pain points I'm trying to address.

I really can't emphasize enough how revolutionary the PSoC Creator IDE is. I've been using it for the past three years, and it FAR exceeds any other MCU development environment I've ever used. (including a few mentioned in the comments here)

If you are on the fence about it, download the IDE from cypress.com and try it out, it's totally free and always will be. They have several example projects you can get to from the File->Open menu, which illustrate much of the functionality.

Thanks again for the publicity and the support!

<comment><USER4> I took a components design course 5+ years ago, but I haven't done any hardware work since. This project looks really exciting to me, but can you explain some of these features and why they matter?

For example, what is a digital-compatible pin? What makes a pin digital capable, versus analog? And what are some of these serial port limitations mentioned in the project description?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The best Microcontroller?

Does it works on Linux or mac?.

No.

It that software opensource?

No

Why then I should choose this thing instead of more powerful and closed micros like this?: [http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_P...](http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=2551)

<comment><USER6> I think we can all agree that the arduino IDE is a terrible piece of software. It works... on most platforms. It's not bloated. It's kind of documented. That's about all the good you can say about it.

...but I have to agree, sounds like this is a neat platform, but if I can't write, compile and deploy code to it, what's the point?

Is it really that hard to provide a tool chain that lets you cross compile binaries for a platform, and a set of headers? I hate these 'integrated development environments'. It's just bloated rubbish-ware.

For all the lack of support the android NDK gets from google, at least they got _that_ right. It's a compiler. That's all it does. You write code in whatever the heck you want, and just compile it.

I don't get why so many companies have such a hard time with understanding why this is desirable.

<comment><USER7> Arduino is just an AVR processor nicely wrapped. They offer their own IDE so you don't have to bother with the difficulties in getting your code on your device.

Atmel maintains an AVR port of the GNU toolchain and provides their own IDE based on Visual Studio.

<comment><USER8> Eclipse + AVRdude is also an excellent IDE for Arduino development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The projects of this guy are really cool (<http://moeller.io>)!

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there stable support for this architecture in GCC and related projects? That is, is there a standard-conforming open toolchain?

Otherwise I wouldn't even bother.

<comment><USER10> PSoC5 is supported by GCC, the Cypress PSoC IDE just makes it easier for novices to get started. There is also a FreeRTOS port to PSoC5, so you can get into some pretty interesting stuff.

That aside, I am really glad they went with PSoC5 (ARM Cortex-M3 architecture) instead of the cheaper PSoC3 (8051 architecture). This makes it easy to prototype on the PSoC5 and then move to a more specialized Cortex when they hit performance limits.

Finally, I don't see mechanical drawings, however, I hope they spaced the parallel connectors on freeSOC n*0.1" apart. One of the frustrating things about Arduino is that the spacing on the shield connector is non-standard, so you can't simply plug it into a breadboard.

<comment><USER11> Just from the descriptions and photos, it looks like the mini will be breadboardable.

The bigger one almost certainly not -- it's arduino compatible and the gap on one side is visibly smaller than the other. Also, it's not clear if the big one will have pins dropping down below the board (just looks like female headers).

<comment><USER10> Yep, I just looked at the pinouts on the larger one and its very likely that they kept the same out-of-spec spacing as the Arduino Uno.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems like fairly reasonable piece of hardware. But what I really dislike is the name. SoC is an established acronym in the industry, so at first I was thinking that they'd be developing their own free (as in speech) SoC. But instead they are just making yet another dev board for a _proprietary_ SoC.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really, really dig this idea. There's a handful of little hardware projects I've wanted to do with an Arduino or the like, but I've found that if you've got slightly different peripheral requirements, it's difficult to find one of these boards that will fit the bill. The idea of being able to significantly change the functionality of the hardware pins without doing loads of work is fantastic.

One minor gripe would be higher precision DACs (only 8-bit?), though the ADCs look great. The DACs would be a problem for audio, though the ADCs would be good for the lab.

</comment><comment><USER14> Best pair of odd sock(sic) I've seen in ages.

What is interesting is the ability to program them via a graphical drag and drop style visual programming language and that is something for people learning that will appeal strongly. As for the specs and abilities I shall leave that to those more vested in this microcontroller.

<comment><USER15> It has dragging and dropping some components of the program, but still requires code. It's not a visual programming language. Also, even the visual aspect of it is rather technical. To fully use this board, it seems one has to already be familiar with datasheets, C, and the concepts of components like PWM or protocols like I2C, and so on.

That said, this seems to be a great product for people who already have some experience with these concepts, and want an Arduino-like device that better suits them. I think I'll be buying this board. I'll sleep on it, though.

<comment><USER14> Yes I do fall into that concepts catergory, though does seem more approachable. I too am sleeping upon it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems like a powerful device. Did I miss it or is there no information on power consumption?

<comment><USER2> You're right, I don't think that's been stated yet. The chip itself is fairly low power draw- but with those op-amps and other stuff onboard I'm guessing that stuff might be able to draw a good bit more.

<comment><USER17> The PSoC is so highly configurable internally that power consumption will totally be up to how you set up the internal clocks and analog blocks. Cypress has a great set of technical notes about all of these aspects. This TN even includes a spreadsheet to help you estimate power draw and battery life:

<http://www.cypress.com/?rID=64554>

<comment><USER2> That's essentially what I was thinking- its going to be low-ish power consumption, but its all going to be about how you set it up.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


VentureBeat: Southern Cal overtakes New England in start-up activity - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2007/04/24/southern-cal-overtakes-new-england-in-start-up-activity/ <comment><USER2> For those who prefer a nice pretty graph to their black-and-white table:

<http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pduUBxhjbJPfWKalnsvFaew></comment>


GitHub under possible DDOS attack - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> From their status page: 23:11 UTC We're enabling DDoS mitigation after detecting a large incoming spike in traffic volume.</comment>


William Blake's design innovations - <AUTHOR> https://www.newstatesman.com/william-blake-rebel-radical-revolutionary-tate-britain-exhibition-london-review <comment><USER2> I've seen William Blake mentioned twice in two days.

Last night Kris Kristofferson mentioned him as the reason for leaving his old life behind and moving to Nashville, working as a janitor at the studio, while trying to be a songwriter.

Around 42m mark:

[https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/country-music/episode-6-will- th...](https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/country-music/episode-6-will-the-circle- be-unbroken-1968-1972)

Unfortunately there's a long ad at the beginning.

The quote was from this:

"If you, who are organized by Divine Providence for spiritual communion, refuse, and bury your talent in the earth, even though you should want natural bread,—sorrow and desperation pursue you through life, and after death shame and confusion of face to eternity. Every one in eternity will leave you, aghast at the man who was crowned with glory and honour by his brethren, and betrayed their cause to their enemies. You will be called the base Judas who betrayed his friend!'—Such words would make any stout man tremble, and how then could I be at ease? But I am now no longer in that state, and now go on again with my task, fearless, though my path is difficult. I have no fear of stumbling while I keep it."

<comment><USER3> > _I've seen William Blake mentioned twice in two days._

[https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof- phenomeno...](https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/)</comment></comment>