Devils, Deals and the DEA: the DEA's longest running drug cartel case - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/devils-deals-and-the-dea <comment><USER2> Really interesting article - highlights how the DEA were/are twisted into helping whichever cartel they're not targeting. Another pointless, expensive and violent fail in the war against drugs.

<comment><USER3> Why is it pointless? (real question) Also, something I'm not sure I get entirely is why violence is like _the silver bullet_ of cartels? Necessary I get it, silver bullet? Why? What is calculated violence?

<comment><USER4> It's pointless because we spend billions of dollars and compromise our own morality (see: all the killers they let walk) to put away one group, only to watch another group immediately spring up and be just as bad, if not worse. And this isn't a new trend, but a multi-decade pattern at this point. And all of this - the violence, the retribution, the lives ruined, the money thrown away, multiple countries turned into war zones - is a result of our insane drug laws. It didn't have to be like this, but we made it this way.

And calculated violence is violence used to make a point. The guy they beat to death until his body was "like a bag of ice" was killed to stop his investigations, but also to scare off other investigators.

<comment><USER3> I see what you mean. It's because of the way we handle drugs that this extreme violence happens. Very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting detail: the cartel guy is wearing a kevlar when arrested. Odds must be the guy could shot right here.</comment>


US CDC on preparedness for a zombie apocalypse  - <AUTHOR> http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp

<comment><USER2> Sword Camp 2008: Zompocalypse, Day Five <http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=323>

</comment><comment><USER3> Any article on zombie apocalypse preparedness that doesn't even mention shotguns is obviously worthless.

<comment><USER4> This is why I have fantasy of hiding shotgun shells everywhere. Ever notice how video games have shells everywhere? who put them there. That's right, some nut-job wacko like me. When I was homeless on college campus, I considered doing this until I realized I probably be arrested. Just imagine if there were sports bars and shells everywhere.

<comment><USER5> "Scientists tell us that our prehistoric ancestor Homo Habilis, as he stood high atop a cliff thoughtfully chewing a great mouthful of Ancient Grains brand cereal, often stared up at the sky and wondered: Where can I hide my ammo and health?" - <http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons Learned - Again and Again - <AUTHOR> http://felipe-lopes.com/2009/09/09/lessons-learned-again-and-again/

<comment><USER2> Do what you love and love what you do...I completely agree with your philosophy of not working with something you don't like because I believe that one of the fundamental principles of opportunities is PASSION. Without passion, opportunities are not born!</comment>


Butterfly Labs Announces Next Generation ASIC Lineup - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/butterfly-labs-announces-next-generation-asic-lineup-054626776.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting company / "press release". So their CTO is named "Nasser G", their contact is named "Nick W". They have venture capital funding by an unnamed "private equity group". According to their website, they are based in Kansas City, Missouri but if you search the states business register there is no "Butterfly inc." The trademarks "Butterfly Labs" and "BitForce SC" do not exist in the USPTO database either...

Doesn't this seem a bit unusual for a company promising to deliver a $29,899 product?

<comment><USER3> <http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=141>

<https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53530.0>

Doesn't look like the Bitcoin community ever received their first gen of products.

<comment><AUTHOR> Butterfly Labs is shipping real products. I personally own multiple units of their first gen product, the "Single". Many in the Bitcoin community own them as well: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=70611.msg813386#msg8...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=70611.msg813386#msg813386)

That said, when Butterfly Labs pre-announced their Singles, it is true that many thought it was a scam... until they delivered.

<comment><USER3> Did the performance and power consumption live up to the expectations?

<comment><AUTHOR> They claim 832 Mhash/s at 80W for the Singles. And, yes, my units match these characteristics.

It is worth pointing out that before they had a Single prototype, 6 months ago, they had pre-announced 1000 Mhash/s at 20W... which turned out to be off by 5x in terms of Mhash/Joule. I think there is a fair chance that this ASIC pre-announcement will also fail to reflect the actual numbers. By how much? Who knows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps the greatest contribution the Bitcoin experiment will make to humankind is to teach you and me and our neighbors more about the realities of economics. Many of the ideas about how to mine Bitcoins, store Bitcoins, and trade with Bitcoins as a medium of exchange illustrate both the strengths and weaknesses of any other medium of exchange in a world full of human beings. Seeing the discussion of Bitcoins here on Hacker News reminds me of the last time that the price of gold (in United States dollars) crashed, and the arguments beforehand that such an occurrence was impossible, for instance. "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" is still an important principle of investment.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think they're using easic.com, which lets you build an ASIC(or something reasonably close to an ASIC in price and performance), with small minimum orders, and low cost design tools.

They start at minimum of 45 chips for 45K$ including the tools, and the price gown down from there.

With the minimum quantities needed in order to justify manufacturing an high end ASIC rising dramatically, this seems like something that would disrupt the ASIC and some of the FPGA business.

</comment><comment><USER6> I looked into bitcoin mining before as a possible hackish investment, but there seemed to be anniversary where they made mining twice as hard. As it stood when I checked it out (few months ago) you would only make a buck or two a day with a top of the line graphics card, counting in cheap electricity but NOT the price of the hardware. I cant imagine what happens if they continue doing that (making it more difficult)

<comment><USER7> You're meant to move to making money from processing transactions than mining for new coins, but that's still far from now.

<comment><USER8> That assumes BitCoin takes off and becomes popular. Which has not been the case yet.

<comment><USER9> How do we determine 'popular', though? According to <http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/> there were 3.5M Bitcoins sent in the last 24 hours. MtGox has them at $6.50 each at the moment.

I wouldn't consider $22M worth of transactions in the last 24 hours 'unpopular'...

<comment><USER10> So, if i move my funds between bank accounts a few times a day i can create a popular multi million euro economy? I don't think 3,5m * $6,50 is the correct measurement of popularity.

<comment><USER9> I guess if you think that people are just moving Bitcoins around to bump up those numbers, then maybe it's not really measuring anything...

I honestly don't know the best way to measure popularity, but I'd love to hear a good way to do so. Until then, well, for me at least, that seems to be the best way to try and work it out. How else do you judge popularity of a currency other than by how much it's being used?

<comment><USER11> Popularity relates to total value so ~9million coins * 6$ a coin = 54 million in total value which is minuscule in therms of global finance. But, number of places you can spend it also counts and there is just not many places selling bit-coins. Even though it would seem like an easy way to launder drug money it's still just a toy.

<comment><USER9> I don't want to sound as though I'm arguing for arguments sake, and I really have no dog in this fight. But using the argument of 'size in terms of global finance' would surely render most currencies other than say USD, the Euro and a couple of Asian currencies as 'not popular', wouldn't it?

To be honest, I look at the total above of $54M and think "transactions over 24 hours worth $22M for a currency whose entire value is $54M... that seems liquid at least" (for my pathetic understanding of economics). To me, it seems as though there is a lot of activity within the currency itself, which to me says its popular in the circles that use it. Arguing that it's not popular because of its size, despite the activity, would probably mean that something like the New Zealand dollar would be unpopular. But again, I bet that most NZers would disagree.

So then it just comes full circle and again, I just don't know if I believe it's not popular... just maybe, it's 'nichey'?

<comment><USER11> I don't know if you really want to compare the NZD to Bitcoins as the NZD is a lot bigger than you might think.

Anyway, the New Zealand dollar represents 1.6% of all currency trades globally which is small but not exactly _tiny_. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_dollar>

Their M3 is also over 200 billion. I am not sure if that's in NZD or USD but 1 NZD = 0.7901 USD so the difference is not that important. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply>

<comment><USER9> Fair point. To be honest, I just picked the first smallish country I could think of with a stable economy.

Thanks for that data. I guess I still just see tens of millions of dollars movement everyday and think "hey, it's obviously popular somewhere". C'est la vie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bitcoin mining coffee warmer is a great idea. But why we don't have bitcoin mining water heater for entire house? :)

<comment><USER13> That has been done already <http://bitfury.org/bitfury110.html>

        using mining equipment to produce hot water and house heating

<comment><USER14> Those who bought old one, now f$%&^d up. New line of mining HW is order of magnitude cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > 1) BitForce SC Jalapeno: a USB powered coffee warmer providing 3.5 GH/s, > priced at under $149

/not sure if serious

</comment><comment><USER16> I looked at bitcoin a while back when the hype was at its peak. Sadly though by then mining using normal equipment was impractical, so i just ignored it.

Do people actually use bitcoins nowadays, or is it more of a speculative market?

<comment><USER17> >Do people actually use bitcoins nowadays, or is it more of a speculative market?

For things that you cannot as safely use normal currency, like drugs. Also, Wikileaks recently announced that they will accept donations in bitcoins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How many other companies are out there selling Bitcoin mining picks and shovels?

<comment><AUTHOR> At least 3 companies:

Enterpoint: <http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/cairnsmore/cairnsmore1.html>

Ztex: <http://www.ztex.de>

BTCFPGA: <http://btcfpga.com/>

Plus a few independent FPGA board developers on the Bitcoin forums:

ICARUS: <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51371.0>

X6500: <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40058.0>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting that this press release carefully avoids mentioning 'bitcoin' at all...

The other thing that caught my eye is that $30k will supposedly get you 1 Terahash/s. Well, the entire bitcoin network hashrate is currently only 12 Terahash/s which means someone only needs to purchase about 12 of these devices to gain a majority share. That's less than half a million dollars' investment.

<comment> mike-cardwell So if you bought one of these for $30k and used it for mining you'd get 1/13th of the bitcoins generated? iirc, 50 bitcoins are released every ten minutes? So you'd get mine an average of 550 bitcoins a day. Which are currently worth about $5 each. So it would take about 10 days to recuperate the cost of the server.

[edit] Of course this assumes that nobody else buys one of these servers for bitcoin mining and that using it doesn't cause the value of a bitcoin to drop.

<comment><USER8> The main problem is that if you own the majority of the hashing power, you can rewrite history. You can make all the bitcoin ever mined owned by you.

<comment><USER20> Assuming the manufacturer has produced 12 of these beasts already, they already possess the power to rewrite bitcoin history.

Instead of selling the machines for $30k a piece, could they not just use the machines themselves to transfer all bitcoins in the world to their own wallet? The total amount of bitcoins mined to this date should value much more than 12*$30k?

Does that mean that the entire bitcoin network should as of today be considered compromised, game over, pack up and go home?

<comment><AUTHOR> If they did this, the attack would cause a panic, and Bitcoin would likely instantly loose its value, thereby undermining the validity of their own (illegitimately acquired) wealth. Not very smart...

The inventor of Bitcoin once described this scenario, saying it would be smarter and more profitable to simply mine bitcoins legitimately...

<comment><USER21> How would it be illegitimate? Mining bitcoins is based on math, and if they do the math they have earned it.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Illegitimate" is the wrong word. I meant wealth acquired without following the proper rules (ie. mining on the longest chain, because the attacker would purposefully try to fork the chain from a past block.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lost in Translation or Why GWT Isn't the Future of Web Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.cforcoding.com/2009/10/lost-in-translation-or-why-gwt-isnt.html <comment><USER2> Whether or not GWT is the future of (client side) web development is left to be seen but I think its very existence frameworks like it suggest that there is a need that needs to be filled.

More and more advanced applications are being built in the browser and Javascript doesn't provide the tools to build applications of that scale. Java has been proven for these type of applications in the enterprise and it's not surprising to see efforts being made to apply it to rich ajax applications.</comment>


USC Professor Placed on Leave After Some Complained His Using of a Chinese Word - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalreview.com/news/usc-professor-placed-on-leave-after-black-students-complained-his-pronunciation-of-a-chinese-word-affected-their-mental-health/ <comment><USER2> The complaining students are factually wrong when they say: "The word is most commonly used with a pause in between both syllables". It isn't. I heard it countless times when I lived in China.

This is just stupid.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This news report contains a short recording of the questioned lecture. His pronunciation is actually not that off.

</comment><comment><USER3> The academic world has gone mad.

<comment><AUTHOR> His pronunciation of the Chinese word is actually pretty good.</comment></comment>


It Takes Courage To Delete Code - <AUTHOR> http://horia.me/on-deleting-code?utm_source=hn <comment><USER2> Well. There's two reasons to delete code. One is to delete code you think is unused or better rewritten. In this case you have unit tests and your source control system that keeps the deleted lines forever and makes it more or less easy to get them back.

But if you want to delete code that's in use, that's different. You know: The code might be some rarely used feature, something added for one customers request or something that a lot of people once wanted but is now solved in a much better way but might still have some users.

In that case, removing the code certainly takes courage. Can you explain why the feature is gone? Can your users/customers live with the feature being gone (even though there might be a better replacement, they might be used to the old ways)?

Feature-creep is the most common case for unwanted code, bugs and maintainability issues.

It feels great though once you show the courage to remove the cruft and then you can look at lines over lines of red code (my diff highlights removed lines in red).

<comment><AUTHOR> I was talking deleting code that's about to be rewritten, or that just doesn't work, but this is a great twist!

When taking out a feature, I don't think of it as code (unless a feature is dragging the app's performance to the ground). So I take it up with the person in charge (sometimes, that's me) and urge the approval of its removal.

Taking care of users is the fun part -- because if people are furious about a missing feature, they're passionate about what you're building. Nothing compares to that, eh?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No it doesn't. Your version control system will keep the deleted piece for you forever.

In the examples the OP is giving, the purpose of code comments is storing the snippets of the earlier code the developer might eventually need. No matter which VCS you use, it is better suited for that purpose. There's nothing heroic about that, so yes, go ahead and delete that piece.

<comment><USER4> Yes. When I first started using version control, the freedom to refactor and delete old code confidently was a thrill. These days, even a tiny, short-term project can get the benefit of version control; it's as simple as `git init`. There's no reason to leave commented-out code in a file anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A developer who needs courage to delete code is probably doing things wrong in the first place. With source control and good testing, you should be able to delete code without fear.

<comment><USER6> I agree whole heartedly. When you commit you're free to do drastic restructuring, leading to better thought out code. In the worst case you can revert to an earlier stable point but I find that's almost never needed.

This is also a situation where code reviews would help. Unnecessary/redundant comments are badly considered forms of communication between coders. When someone is going to review your code critically it forces you to be clear and concise, otherwise they'll call you out on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seriously. Once I was assigned to a project with a coworker that commented code instead of deleting it. I explained to him why this was wrong, he kind of agreed and deleted some of the commented code as he saw it, but didn't care much either way. Until at some point, we needed to test a part of the program without a feature, so we commented the code that was related to it. When the time came to uncomment that code, we realized we had no quick way to know which code we had just commented, and what was old stuff that should have been deleted.

After we finished with that, we took a few hours to remove all the useless commented code.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think all this is relative. It depends how "low level" the code is. I appreciate I have it in source control but I will leave it there for a few builds before getting rid of it. If its closer to the UI in terms of code then I will generally just get rid. I suppose it depends how much code depends on that code.

I know if I made a massive change in my httphandler code then I would definitely comment it out. I would like to be able to go back in, uncomment and rebuild in the instance old "tried and tested" code needs to be put back up. You generally do change code for a reason and it's generally to improve or because you find a bug but if you have had code running on that function for years and its just cropped up then uncommenting works for me.

Like I say, after a few builds and seeing the new code in action I will delete it but I think it does serve a purpose.

If you put a line of comment above the code explaining why it is there then that would help anyone browsing over the comments.

Just my 2 cents

<comment><AUTHOR> I do get your point.

I read a comment once: "Uncomment this if the site crashes!" And there was an SQL query commented just below.

While that does make for pretty bad code, I guess you need to take circumstances into account. Stuff like "did they have time or budget to fix the bug the right way?" "Is this piece of code meant to run when testing the app locally so it doesn't send emails?" And all that jazz.

But, as you pointed out, an explanatory comment does wonders and conveys the right context for the commented code -- which was my original problem.

Thank you for taking the time to reply, Chris.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I could have written this article myself.

For me, it is simple. Code maintainability is of paramount importance, and you've got all the history in the version control anyways. Comment is not Code. They are written for humans for maintaining the program, where as code is written for machine to execute.

No _code_ should be commented. Ever* __. Comments should _only_ contain text in english (or what ever language you + your collaborators/people you have to maintain the code in future speak.)

* _Well, Unless you are not using Version control, which is criminally bad. There is absolutely no reason to not use version control._

<comment><USER8> I disagree with this. I actually comment out code to show what the end result would be.

If have a piece of code that iterates over to create the json to make a gallery object. I have done what the json end result should look like and commented it out so if anyone comes back in future they can see what I have done and why I have done it.

I suppose you could argue that the code example is a comment but it is code at the end of the day

<comment><USER9> Why not actually write an example (like a short blog post, containing some code snippets), in the comment, using the native language, instead of commenting the live code?

Dont you think it would improve the readability of the code? Sure it takes slightly more time, (may be 10 extra mins, for a small example), but I can assure you, a newbie, who is new to the codebase/language, would certainly appreciate such an example. (I know, I would have.)

<comment><USER8> I do it because its inline.

If someone is looking over the code and right above the recursion see's an example of what I am doing in my eyes makes it more readable.

Don't get me wrong, it's not something I do every day, I may have done it 3 or 4 times in my life but I have done it. I mainly do it for debugging purposes. If you are stepping through and you can see a string example of the output you can instantly compare it to your built string of JSON.

I am probably just being pedantic but I can see a use for commenting certain code. If i blog posted it and changed it then I would need to make an active effort to update the blog. It would be like maintaining documentation. I can just update the comment above and be on my way.

I think everyone has their own methods and I'm not saying yours is wrong, I am just saying I do see a need to put code in comments sometimes.

There are only two devs here though and we know what we are doing, if a noob came in then to be honest they wouldn't be touching my code until they understand it anyway

<comment><USER9> > I am just saying I do see a need to put code in comments sometimes.

Yup, There are rules, and then, there are rules. The important thing is to realize what practice makes sense, for the given condition... and _why_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ii doesn't take courage. Just a little experience tells you that code you delete is less code to maintain. And if you want to build anything non- trivial, maintainability is absolutely critical.

I _love_ deleting code.

<comment><USER11> It does courage to remove code if you have to deal with customers or users that, it turns out, relied on the feature.

A good example of this is Google Docs. In the first version of Docs, it was possible to change CSS style sheets and make changes to the low-level document. You could change background colors and so on.

In the rewrite they removed this functionality to achieve "more simplicity". However, many people were relying on the customizability, so they have a ton of complaints about the new version.

It appears that the current decision is to keep the old version "forever". Of course, whether this is true remains to be seen. But the lesson is that even if you think a certain feature is useless, people might be relying on it. You're never sure how customers are actually using your program.

So if you "boldly" delete something you might end up maintaining more versions, have to reinstate the deleted code, or lose customers. I think that's where the courage comes in.

<comment><USER9> No one is arguing for _throwing away_ the code. There is certain amount of brains, efforts, time and money spent on writing code.

What is argued is, the _active current_ code should be readable. Version control systems, handle older versions of code very well.

<comment><USER11> To your users, removing something from the latest release is equivalent to throwing away the code. Sure, you can trivially bring it back using source control, but the user can not, so the damage might already be done.

<comment><USER9> End users do not get affected by commented code. A more direct and positive way of making sure that the users do not get affected, would be to be responsible and actually test the code before putting it in-front of the users.

<comment><USER11> Testing doesn't help if you decide to remove a feature on purpose.

Read my post again, would testing have helped Google in this case?

<comment><USER9> No it will not. That is a business decision anyways.

I dont think this is what the post is concerned about. It is about the dead code, developers leave as commented (for some reason), instead of actually deleting it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I comment the code out and leave a dated comment telling myself to delete it if commenting it out has caused no issues... I think that's a lot nicer than having to fetch code from a revision control system if you've taken something out that's important...

And besides if in a couple of weeks there has been no issues as a result of the refactor it's then very simple to see what to delete.

</comment><comment><USER13> I remember those days. To this day, I still comment out the old code and leave it until I'm 100% sure of the new code. Hopefully this is -before- I commit to source control, but sometimes it's not.

Also, shotgun coding isn't a bad thing in itself. Code, then optimize. In other words, just get it working, then rewrite it better. It's usually faster and cleaner in the end.

<comment><AUTHOR> So long as you DO refactor when you're done. I sometimes write a mess, too -- especially with CSS -- but in the end it's all clean and wrinkle free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I was younger or when I started a new project, I liked to think about productivity in terms of "lines of code written today". Now or when I'm in a big codebase, I like to measure in terms of "lines of code deleted today".

</comment><comment><USER15> My question to anyone I catch doing that: Are you saving that code for a rainy day? The answer then usually varies but more often than not they get the point and delete it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course we are. All the changes to the code (or most, because not everyone likes source control) are kept with your VCS (git, svn, what have you)

Just keep the codebase clean and have a spine!</comment></comment>


Podcast recommendations for tech startup founders? - <AUTHOR> What podcasts will you recommend for a B2B tech startup founder? I am looking for recommendations in design, productivity and positioning/branding.
My current favorites are a) IndieHackers b) Live in the Feast
What will you recommend? <comment><USER2> I like Masters of Scale even though it's really overproduced with too many sound effects. The episodes could be longer with less breaks, but it's still an enjoyable listen.</comment>


Why Apple's Suburban Spaceship Could Lose the War for Tech Talent - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2013/12/apple-suburban-mothership/ <comment><USER3> The article assumes that the best people to hire are twenty-somethings that want to live in the city. What about catering to the 30 and 40 something senior engineers? In my experience it's much easier to hire a newly graduated, smart young engineer than it is to hire somebody with 10+ years experience.

Those people may have a family, and would much prefer a suburban home in a good school district.

Apple isn't part of the tech _startup_ scene, it's been around a long time and they know the value of retaining experienced engineers.

<comment><USER4> In general yes, but as a someone who that fits that story arc, I find the dichotomy of insanely overpriced tiny city vs desolate parking lot, well, lousy. I love the idea of what apple is building but there is still no walkable / bicycle friendly place to live in the bay area. In central Tokyo i can cycle to work in less than 15 minutes or walk in 40. Or take one of the many many buses or trains departing every 2-4 minutes. Does that quality of city planning exist anywhere in the US? I have not seen it.

<comment><USER5> _there is still no walkable / bicycle friendly place to live in the bay area_

This is just false; San Francisco is plenty walkable and public transit generally works quite well, despite the grousing you may hear from the people whom it has spoiled.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough, but when i lived there, every single person i knew had a car and real estate in SF is so astronomically expensive that none of my friends, all of them highly paid, live IN the city. So living in SF but never getting in a car doesnt seem realistic unless you dont mind never visiting your friends. I suppose that makes SF liveable without a car

<comment><USER5> Just out of curiosity, when did you live there?

I live in SF without a car and I'd be hard pressed to name three friends who _do_ have a car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Or they could build a huge campus in SF and then suffer the wrath of locals decrying how tech cos directly take up valuable real-estate, as well as indirectly by people who move to be closer to campus all driving up prices and driving out the poor from the city.

Attack local zoning laws which made sense in the 50s but don't make sense in a modern metropolis. The peninsula should make El Camino, from SSF to Santa Clara a high density canyon with underground transport. The transit project would lose money the first decade or two, but would set the stage for the following decades for business development, housing and community.

[Added] It's not lost on me that this would require State governance to overcome the hurdles presented by having to manage the needs and input from ten different local governments and agencies.

<comment><USER7> This is an astute comment and I hope it gets the upvotes it deserves; for more on the subject, see [http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/25/bay_area_zoni...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/25/bay_area_zoning_if_you_want_to_talk_housing_you_have_to_talk_zoning.html) and [http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/10/housing_costs...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/10/housing_costs_it_s_the_zoning_stupid.html) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think about offices a lot, but I don't really agree with this article all that much. Apple isn't the same company as the so called "hot, tech" companies located in San Francisco.

An office for a growing 20-150 employee company, or even 1000+ employee company is entirely different than an office that will hold 15,000 employees, r&d facilities, parking, etc. Apple would literally need to build a skyscraper to achieve that in San Francisco proper.

I also don't agree that Facebook moved from Palo Alto to Menlo Park to be closer to the city in order to attract talent. It was about gathering enough real estate to house their growing company (and probably about who offered higher tax breaks).

EDIT: I guess my comment doesn't really address the idea that they might lose tech talent, but rather more the idea that having an office in SF is actually feasible.

<comment><USER9> According to Google Maps, Menlo Park is about 3 miles from Palo Alto. For those of us not in SV, are we missing some reason why this really rates as closer?

<comment><USER8> I thought about that as well, but just didn't add it in my comment. The office is probably actually further away for many employees that already located themselves in Palo Alto to be close to HQ.

<comment><USER10> Also much worse for those who located themselves close to 280 / Caltrain / Foothill Ave for the easy commute to the old office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yes, about that... I'll live in downtown San Francisco when Federal Reserve Notes start to grow out of my hair follicles.

There are experienced and talented engineers that won't even live anywhere in the entire state of California. Apple is not shooting itself in the foot by building an enormous headquarters in the suburbs: it is shooting itself in the foot by building an enormous headquarters, period.

Tech companies that large should instead be establishing as many satellite offices as they can manage in the commercial collar areas between urban centers and their suburbs. You don't actually want all of your employees to be competing with each other for their homes and groceries, because that just raises your labor costs. Also, you don't want to dredge the bottom of a local talent pool while ignoring the cream at the top of another.

Instead of 2000 employees in one building, you can pay less on labor costs (which will dwarf your facilities costs) by putting 200 employees in 10 buildings. Let's just say Portland, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, St. Louis, Nashville, Raleigh, Albany, Ottawa, and Guadalajara. That way, you don't end up competing with yourself for resources.

</comment><comment><USER12> If like me you sometimes skim the comments before going to the article - <USER2> reading this article completely. There are a couple of major assumptions and lot of specious reasoning.

Apple could lose the War for talent because...it is not in SF. Being in SF counts because...because every company who wants "20 Somethings" is presumably migrating to SF or setting up a presence. So the company with the "think different" slogan that is famous for doing things its own way should...stop being different & follow everyone.

This writer should be embarrassed to write such drivel.

<comment><USER13> Well if they just want 20-somethings, they could always market the spaceship as a retreat center. I mean, cmon, it'd be the ironic thing to do. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are they limiting the definition of "tech talent" to single 25-somethings? I know plenty of engineers with families who dont want to or cannot afford to live in San Francisco and like to live in the south bay/east bay or in the peninsula.

</comment><comment><USER15> What a silly article. Combined with the Forbes article today on where people are moving after they get a bit older it is even more obviously wrong.

Personally I think a lot of people will really enjoy working in that building. Certainly enough to fill it up. I look forward to seeing it and the little tourist shop replicas :-).

<comment><USER16> _Combined with the Forbes article today..._

The premise of _this_ article is that Apple's Most Desired hire is a hip-and- with-it 22-year-old, so I can see why they would ignore the Forbes article about where the 30-somethings are moving.

Not to say, of course, that I believe Apple is gunning for the fresh-faced crowd with this campus.

<comment><USER15> True, from PayScale [1] - *"The median age of Employees 31"

[1] [http://www.payscale.com/top-tech-employers- compared-2012/emp...](http://www.payscale.com/top-tech-employers- compared-2012/employee-demographics)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm sure most of Apple's most valued employees are already near the new campus location. Relocating the office to the city to increase commute time and stress just wasn't going to happen.

Another office in SF like Google might be a good idea, though.

<comment><USER8> I imagine that dividing up where Apple's main product engineering, design, etc is not something that Apple even wants to do in the first place. Keeping secret things secret is probably much easier when it is all located in one place as opposed to spread out in many places.

<comment><USER18> Apple is already spread out into many buildings all over Cupertino.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Apple could have found itself (accidentally) in a great position where they capture the people who are highly technical, but also looking to get their kid into a good, easy-to-access school.

I can't really add much other than anecdotal evidence, but, the PhDs I know loved San Fran when they were young and hate it now that they're trying to raise a family. Instead of the "I love Berkeley!" and "I love San Francisco!" like I used to hear from them, I now hear things like, "We're thinking something outside of San Diego." or even more drastically, "Why don't we look at houses in Wisconsin the next time we visit your folks over Christmas?" ...And family seems to be _the deciding factor_ that changed the tune.

</comment><comment><USER20> Honestly my bigger issue (and I'm not a twenty-something engineer) is that it's such an isolated campus. I might not mind working in the suburbs, but even the suburbs are moving towards walk-able interesting places, rather than these weird isolated complexes you drive between. There are areas in the suburbs that have apartments, restaurants, stores, and offices. I'd much prefer to work in one of those mixed-use environments. I would definitely consider not working for a company that took 15 minutes just to get from the building back to a road.

<comment><USER21> I think the problem is that other than San Jose, there isn't really a large scale downtown or space that can easily turn into one that can accommodate such a large campus. So you get stuck with isolated campuses like Google, Facebook, etc... Apple's offices are actually closer to a downtown than those two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Increasingly, young tech talent wants to live and work <strike>in cities.</strike> remotely.

<comment><USER23> Yes, this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think this article is spot on. I would already be fearful of working at a place with an insular attitude, to be physically isolated too would be difficult. I think the physical isolation is something that Steve wanted. It also will probably affect Apple less than other companies because they have such a top down management style (where the intermingling of ideas wouldn't help so much).

</comment><comment><USER25> This might completely change b 2016. Who knows how things change by then. When the start ups mature they will/might rethink where they operate. We could enter a recession or every start up could be priced out of SF.

</comment><comment><USER23> Not all of us want to live and work in the city.

</comment><comment><USER26> The green space of the future Apple campus is incredible -- it would be very hard to achieve that in the city.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I generate leads? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Thanks to the community for inspiring me. It's my first time trying to build something commercial. I'm developing a web service for real estate agents to create a listings page with a few simple click.
http://signup.mintspaces.com/
I'm trying to generate some leads and am wondering if there are any experts who can give some pointers.
My basic strategy is to visit real estate forums, google search real estate agent websites and reach out to them and try to get them to sign up. My marketing skills aren't the best so I hope someone with more experience can help me out.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I've worked with real estate technology, and the best way to get clients is to get to know the brokers. Create a relationship with a broker, "team", group, whatever you want to call it but that's what you need to do.

Find local real estate agents, and see who they are working with.

Just be careful though, chances are whatever service the agent is using for their website already has a listings creator.

I know that Zillow just created a service a few months ago, and there are some others out there as well.

Also, as far as the backend goes, you want it to be simple. Real Estate agents are concerned about making money, and for the most part they do not believe in the internet yet and they do not believe that the internet is a viable source for lead generation.

You're in a good position, because their mindset is changing especially with a wave of new real estate agents coming in.

In marketing it, you need to explain that your product is strong in two points, the front-end and the backend. Make sure your product at the bare minimum can export to a CSV file, but try to see what software agents are using to manage their agents, and create export features for that.

Make sure they get leads right away, and they are legit leads. I used akismet for our lead generator, and it worked great for the most part to weed out the spam.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I'd be more than happy to help you how I can in a general sense, I don't want to step on my previous employers toes though since they are also getting into the same market eventually (could be years though).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all your help! I've been speaking with a friend of mine who's a real estate agent. He's mentioned about IDX listings - would you happen to know how it works and whether or not, I can just fetch API data? It seems like some companies provide it as a full embeddable solution which looks horrible for my purposes.

Would you also be able to elaborate more on using akismet for lead generator? Did you mean that spammers would hit the contact form fairly often?

Thanks for your help. And I understand about not stepping on your previous employers' toes. If there are any questions I'm asking that you do not feel comfortable with, please let me know.

<comment><USER2> No worries. IDX Information you get from the MLS directly. They are very strict about their feeds, so you'll have to talk to them about their terms and conditions and how they allow you to access their information. The RETS[1] feed is slowly becoming the standard, but again, it varies.

To start, I'd just have it simply be a form the agent can fill out. I think Zillow might have an API, but you'll just have to put on the site that the data is from Zillow. A small price to pay for a huge convenience for the agent.

I used Akismet to weed out spam posts. I didn't want to implement a captcha, I set up a javascript honeypot as the first defense but Akismet was the second defense. It was great, because it allowed for "Mark as spam" "This is not spam" options that you can contribute back to the Akismet engine to make it smarter, and it took about an hour to implement in PHP...super easy and a great selling point.

[1]: <http://www.rets.org/> (Looks like their website is down)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it's awesome your reaching out for help. I think the problem your going to run into is the same problem I've run into many times before.

Your basically starting in the wrong place. Rather than coming up with an idea and trying to find market fit and leads you really ought to be finding your market and learning how to help them. If you take that approach not only will you know how to reach your market but you'll also know more about how to sell and talk to them.

A few questions to consider

1) Do real estate agents buy software?

2) Does the pain point your working on make them more money or drastically decrease pain?

3) How do you plan on reaching your market?

I'm not saying I'm an expert on this by any means but I'm learning as I go and have come to the point where I won't bullshit myself any longer on useless ideas.

Feel free to email me at email@example.com or hit me up on twitter @nalidixic

Cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice! So far, I've talked to several people based upon Jason Cohen's advice on getting at least 10 people to say they would pay for it. So far, I have about 6 but maybe I'm missing something here.

I'll attempt to answer your questions :) I just checked out your rent management software. It looks great - had a similar idea but didn't work on it. Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://signup.mintspaces.com/></comment>


New Material Makes It Easier to Store Lots of Natural Gas - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/542976/new-material-makes-it-easier-to-store-lots-of-natural-gas/ <comment><USER2> Early stages: Imagine a tank filled with a sponge that adsorbs natural gas, allowing it to be stored at effectively higher pressures without (or with less) compression. They need to it 25-35 atmosphere-equivalent, and are at around 5; there is a lot of leakage (definitely a bad thing).</comment>


The Polemical Doodles of Léon Krier, the Intellectual Godfather of New Urbanism - <AUTHOR> https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/polemical-doodles-of-leon-krier/ <comment><USER2> Hardly doodles, aren't they? They are more cartoons, quite satirical, but also metaphorical, and fail where metaphors often fail. He's got a point, but I don't think he has the solution.</comment>


BigPipe: Pipelining web pages for high performance - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/bigpipe-pipelining-web-pages-for-high-performance/389414033919/ <comment><USER2> I don't know what is wrong at facebook, but I have zero image

<comment><USER3> Date: 2010. Might explain the broken page.</comment></comment>


Carbon dioxide levels in atmosphere hit record high in May - <AUTHOR> https://www.noaa.gov/news/carbon-dioxide-levels-in-atmosphere-hit-record-high-in-may <comment><USER2> I feel like a small fish incapable of making significant difference. I have reduced my emissions, ride a bike everywhere and am trying to eat mostly plant based foods. What else can I do?

Is there anyone here on HN that can make a bigger difference - any lawmakers, anyone connected with lawmakers, any high ups in a large company, any influencers? It is your obligation to help us - we _need_ you to be our voice.

<comment><USER3> The masses of macho guys and Trump voters aren't converting to bike riding and veggie eating any time soon.

That's why Tesla creating eco cars that out-muscle most muscle cars is so brilliant. It can show people who would never back down from big powerful cars that their fuel of choice is weak sauce.

I think it will be more effective than appealing to them with carrot juice and sprouts.

So... my advice is buy/lease a Tesla and show it around. At the very least you'll have fun.

<comment><USER4> Nope. It should be prohibitively expensive to own any other car but an electric car. Because the externalized costs of carbon should be fully reconciled in the price of fuel. With the extra tax revenue here, a government could subsidize electric vehicles.

If your fix is waiting on people ( that are wealthy enough ) to choose an electric car over a gasoline car so they feel good about themselves we aren't going to get where we need to be in time.

The economically viable thing to do, needs to be the right thing to do. This is a place for regulation, not the free fucking market.

<comment><USER5> This won't work, because it means all the people who don't have money to buy a new car are now subject to your psychotic fuel tax. Your solution winds up being much more regressive than Tesla making rich people cars.

<comment><USER6> Or they might start living denser, walking and biking more, using and supporting public transport, like the rest of the world's lower-earning people. People adapt to the circumstances in front of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "the rate of increase is accelerating". I was under the impression that we were reducing emissions. It's terrifying that the progress combating climate change is nothing more than lip service.

<comment><USER8> I think people in developed countries are reducing their per capita emissions a bit. However, population is still increasing, and people in many countries are increasing their (material) standard of living in a way that increases emissions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sigh

When will we learn?

I think the answer is incentives. Ideas?

<comment><USER10> There is a bill in the US House of representatives[1] that is _exactly_ the right idea, but it doesn't have nearly enough support at the moment.

1\. The state charges a fee to emit greenhouse gases.

2\. The proceeds of that fee are divided equally amongst all residents of the nation in the form of a monthly check.

3\. The actual bill imposes the fee upstream where the fuel is produced rather than where it is burnt, and imposes border adjustments to prevent outsourcing of emissions to other nations, but I don't want to get into all of that in this post.

4\. It's a reasonably short bill[2]. You could probably read and understand every word in an hour.

You can look at this as a two-sided incentive - if you emit less than average, your dividend will be bigger than the fee that you pay and so you get extra spending money. If you emit more than average, then your fee is higher and you come out in the red. Some economic modeling dudes predict this incentive will cause the USA to emit 40% less within 12 years after the policy is implemented, but I honestly have no idea how reliable that prediction is.

However, while that incentive is great and probably exactly what we need, this policy would be the right, just thing to do _even if it were not going to move the needle on our emissions rates_.

The reason is that, every time [insert your favorite celebrity or business tycoon here] crosses the country in a private jet, they do a little damage to my future and my daughter's. They should reimburse us, and reimburse everyone else they're harming. When I decide to keep my 3000-square-foot house at 70F all through the New England winter, I'm harming your future and those of everyone you love. I should reimburse you.

This policy doesn't place hard limits on any kind of activity or consumption. But any time you're externalizing the cost of your emissions onto society at large, you have to compensate society for the damage.

[1][https://energyinnovationact.org/how-it- works/](https://energyinnovationact.org/how-it-works/)

[2][https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house- bill/763/...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house- bill/763/text)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Earth's population keeps on increasing yet we are now facing the most prominent threat to us as a species.

This cannot go on forever if we don't start putting a maximum cap on our population, then we are heading for a disaster and the Earth itself is going to start doing what we have refused to do so so far.

Except that the reduction of our population will happen through heatwaves, pandemics, droughts...

Then what?

<comment><USER12> > the reduction of our population

What a dangerous idea.

Besides, it's not the issue of absolute population: it's emissions _per capita_ that we should care about.

We could be doing a lot better _per capita_ in these dimensions: \- plastics & packaging, \- energy use, \- military pollution, \- advertising & marketing bullshit, \- bullshit products manufacturing

There's a lot of inefficiency in current economy, which is supported by industrial consent manufacturing.

<comment><USER13> The atmosphere doesn't care how much or little we emit per capita. Total emissions is what should worry us.

<comment><USER12> You do realize that total emissions are a function of emissions per capita, yes?

<comment><USER13> The reason we care about emissions is due to their effect on the atmosphere, of which there is one.

We don't get a free pass to emit more as our population increases. The atmosphere doesn't magically adjust. The effect of emissions on the climate is invariant of our population, and we need to act accordingly.

<comment><USER12> This environmental journalist has a better grasp on the argument: [https://www.vox.com/energy-and- environment/2017/9/26/1635652...](https://www.vox.com/energy-and- environment/2017/9/26/16356524/the-population-question)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One thing that bugs me is they measure CO2 levels in ppm instead of moles/m^3 (or whatever would be appropriate). Why is the denominator assumed constant? Why can't nitrogen, oxygen, argon, water vapor, etc be changing too?

In fact people have been extracting N2 from the atmosphere at scale for ~120 years: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process)

And apparently O2 has been depleting as well: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5138252/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5138252/)

We are at the point where gradeschoolers are questioning why the tables of atmospheric constituents don't add up to 100%:

> _Two recent reliable sources cited here have total atmospheric compositions, > including trace molecules, that exceed 100%. They are Allen 's Astrophysical > Quantities[5] (2000, 100.001241343%) and CRC Handbook of Chemistry and > Physics[4] (2016–2017, 100.004667%), which cites Allen's Astrophysical > Quantities. Both are used as references in this article. Both exceed 100% > because their CO2 values were increased to 345 ppmv, without changing their > other constituents to compensate. This is made worse by the April 2019 CO 2 > value, which is 413.32 ppmv._ > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#cite_note-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#cite_note- > total%-8)

<comment><USER15> If you're saying that moles/m^3 of CO2 might be constant while pmm of CO2 is increasing, that implies that atmospheric pressure at sea level is dropping. And it isn't.

<comment><USER16> The temperature is increasing, though...

<comment><USER17> "Atmospheric pressure" is basically "total mass of air on top of us, per surface area". So it doesn't (directly) depend on temperature.

Edit: Sorry, should be "total _weight_ of air". My physics is rusty.

<comment><USER14> If you took the same mass of air and put it in two tropospheres, one is 2 km high and the other 20 km high. Would there be the same surface pressure?

<comment><USER17> You cannot put air at 2 km and then at 20 km high! Of course the second layer will just flow down until it's supported by the first layer, which is in turn supported by the ground. So your question doesn't really make physical sense.

<comment><USER14> I agree, everything is much more complicated than your original comment implied.

<comment><USER17> I... I just explained why everything adds up to what my original comment said... (sigh)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I posted this the other day and nobody was interested but it seems relevant here: [https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_b2c0c79dc4344b279bcf23...](https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_b2c0c79dc4344b279bcf2365336ff23b.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> Normalized to seasonality and adjusting for uncommon events like volcanoes, shouldn't this happen all the time?

<comment><USER20> I'm honestly curious how one could think this would happen "all the time" in any sort of measurement scheme without things having gone wrong as a prerequisite.

<comment><USER19> I don't know why you assumed I thought nothing was wrong with this. It's obviously a bad thing.

I'm genuinely asking if total carbon dioxide levels are monotonically increasing normalized to the things I mentioned. Wouldn't you be surprised if next May there is less CO2 in the atmosphere barring massive societal change?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How much of it is actually us though? I thought most of our emissions are going down overall its overseas developing countries with few if any regulations and little enforcement of the ones that do exist causing most of it? WTH can we do about it?

All we can do is plant trees.

<comment><USER22> Logic like this leads to no one addressing the problem, ever. Buy local products that use less energy to transport. Reduce, reuse, recycle -- in that order. Pay for energy efficiency. Lobby your government. Stop blaming other people when you are part of the problem too.

<comment><USER21> What if I'm already doing that, and the CO2 emissions are still going up every year?

What if the feedback loop is causing a run away effect?

I feel as an individual, mostly helpless. You say buy local but most of the things your suggesting actually cost more (like buying local and becoming vegetarian).

<comment><USER22> > What if I'm already doing that

You're not.

> What if the feedback loop is causing a run away effect?

It's not. I'm an atmospheric scientist.

> You say buy local but most of the things your suggesting actually cost more

They don't actually cost more. You're just paying the price now, instead of making humanity pay it later in damages.

> (like buying local and becoming vegetarian)

I did not suggest becoming vegetarian. I would have suggested suicide way before I suggested vegetarianism.

In summary, whataboutism isn't the answer to climate change.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Data pipelines and ETLs - <AUTHOR> Been working with an org that is really struggling with the reliability and maintainability of their ETLs and data pipelines. Could you share some tools and best practices in 2017? <comment><USER2> The backstop "best practice" is to put somebody in charge of the issue and give them both the responsibility and authority to fix it.

Next you need to face up to the causes of the problems. There may be five or six root causes, and if you plan to fix just 4 of them, you will pay 80% of the costs, but get 2% or 0% of the benefits in terms of cost savings because the other root causes will still cause chaos, and now people will start to blame the tools and procedures that were tried (those costs will be very visible.)

Getting people on board with a realistic plan can be a little bit like getting an alcoholic to recognize the damage that drinking has done to their life, but the alternative is wishful thinking.

If you want to get into more specifics, click on my HN id and send me an email.

See

[https://www.amazon.com/Art-Getting-Your-Own- Sweet/dp/0070145...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Getting-Your-Own- Sweet/dp/0070145156)

</comment><comment><USER3> We are using Airflow to manage ETL jobs. Nearly all of these are SQL steps dynamically generated via an Airflow DAG that transform transaction and event data on our SQL warehouse into 'master' tables everyone has access to. All SQL and DAG code is committed into Github and we have a process to update Airflow and merge any changes after its peer reviewed. Every change is done via a PR so we have visibility and accountability.

One thing we want to improve is our testing component, curious to hear how people manage test workflows, replicating prod before promoting new pipelines. I.e. I want the branch to run a full test suite against a prod replica before automatically replacing the current prod pipeline.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can you give more background on what your data pipelines are like? Are they mostly batch processes?

If so, I'd strongly recommend using a workflow tool like Luigi[0] or Airflow[1]. In a phrase, I'd say they're like "Make for data".

[0]: [https://github.com/spotify/luigi](https://github.com/spotify/luigi) [1]: [https://github.com/apache/incubator- airflow](https://github.com/apache/incubator-airflow)

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically, we improved a shell scripts based ETLs with lambdas. Now we barely can maintain them, and when a something breaks, it takes an engineer an inordinate amount of energy and time to get them fixed. Since we process about 0.5 to 1.5 TB of time series(IOT) I was thinking about an architecture that combine AWS kinesis and airflow</comment></comment>


Don't give Google double the power - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/03/EDOOSIHM5.DTL&type=tech <comment><AUTHOR> Ironically, I think the position taken in this article is what threatens our democracy, not Google innovating in the advertising marketplace.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I Be Fully Open About a Patentable Physical Technology Idea? - <AUTHOR>

Let's just say I invented the VIRES wing idea (link: http://www.viresaero.com/). That is to say it is a physical technology invention that would be easily understood for someone in aerospace (many people have probably thought of it), but maybe clever in application or execution (I don't know if VIRES is but let's assume so). Should I talk freely to startup incubators in the hopes of getting somewhere or evolving the idea? Should I be afraid of someone with more resources building a prototype before I can, or patenting it, etc.? If you have any "credentials" or supporting anecdotes for your answer please state so. Of course I welcome everyone's opinions. Thanks for all of your input.<p>I am asking this question because of the relatively new (a few years old) patent law regarding first-to-file. If we were still under first-to-invent, I would go ahead, keeping good records of my communications on the idea. <comment><USER2> > Should I be afraid of someone with more resources building a prototype > before I can, or patenting it, etc.?

In a word, yes. The U.S. Patent system has recently changed from a first-to- invent rule, to a first-to-file rule. In some cases this may mean that someone can take your idea and file it is his own. It's not supposed to work that way, and there are various safeguards, but the possibility exists that someone could simply take your idea and claim it as his own.

[http://www.blankrome.com/index.cfm?contentID=37&itemID=2884](http://www.blankrome.com/index.cfm?contentID=37&itemID=2884)

The bottom line is, if you have an idea you think may be patentable, you should file it before revealing it to anyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your input. I am aware of the relatively new law change, and I should have mentioned it in the question (I edited it so that it is now). It is actually the reason I am asking. If we were still first-to-invent, I would go ahead and discuss away with any incubator I wanted, making sure to keep good records of my communications.

Filing presents two obstacles: time limit and cost. Filing a full patent requires lots of money, and filing a provisional patent gives you only a year to choose whether to file a full patent, or the idea is forever unpatentable.

It is really constricting to have to decide these things before being able to talk freely about it.

<comment><USER3> IANAL so be sure to confirm this with a real patent attorney, but...

 _>... or the idea is forever unpatentable._

As I understand it, this is incorrect. Provisional patents, unless followed up by a non-provisional filing within a year, are never published and never searched and and never considered as prior art, or as anything, going forward. They may as well not exist, since typically nobody even looks at them unless a proper non-provisional is filed. You can very well file a patent, or heck, yet another provisional on the same idea (resulting in a new priority date, of course). The risk you run is somebody else filing on, or simply describing, that invention in the interim, in which case you lose rights to claim as your own in the new first-to-file regime.

Edit: I completely understand your hesitation, as it often takes many years to bring even a small innovation to the market, so the choice is hard. That said, a provisional can cost as little as $65 if you qualify as a microentity and file it yourself. All you need is to file a detailed description, and let a real attorney / agent draft the non-provisional if you decide to convert. But be sure to be excruciatingly detailed about _every_ aspect of your invention, else it can limit what you claim in the non-provisional. My view is, for less than a hundred bucks, it may be worth filing one just in case.</comment></comment></comment>


Cashless World - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/cashless_world <comment><USER2> In the cashless world, as long as I can transfer funds to an individual or B2C without transaction headaches or fees (like you can now with paper checks), I'm game.</comment>


Show HN: Portfolio Analytics for Individual Investors - <AUTHOR> https://useilluminate.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi friends,

If you do any personal investing with an online broker (e.g. Fidelity, Charles Schwab), hopefully this is of use to you!

I've struggled for years to find a good way to answer even simple questions about my (small!) investment portfolio. Am I outperforming the S&P? What is my portfolio IRR after factoring in dividends, fees, etc.? Fidelity shows me stats like my historical overall balance, but that's not even telling of portfolio performance since I might be adding/removing capital over time.

Since I couldn't find a good solution, I built a tool specifically for retail/individual investors. Here it is! [https://useilluminate.com/](https://useilluminate.com/) We just launched our private beta so if this sounds of interest I'd love for you to check it out and to get your feedback on what we can improve.

Cheers,

Arthur</comment>


Reflecting on a year of making machine learning useful - <AUTHOR> https://www.shreya-shankar.com/making-ml-work/ <comment><USER2> Agree with this post 100%. There's too much focus on parameter tweaking, and not enough focus on understanding/ inhancing the data. And feature engineering is considered by many DL practicioners to be"cheating" even though it clearly gets quick results.</comment>


The Pale King (David Foster Wallace) is up for pre-order - <AUTHOR> http://amzn.com/0316074233

<comment><USER2> And an Amazon link, rather than amazn(wtf?) [http://www.amazon.com/Pale-King- David-Foster-Wallace/dp/0316...](http://www.amazon.com/Pale-King-David-Foster- Wallace/dp/0316074233)

<comment><AUTHOR> Click the "share" button (underneath the add to cart box). It's their shortner that gives permalinks.

<comment><USER2> Ah - thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much money does early startup spend on UI? - <AUTHOR>

I'm web frontend developer myself, and I was always wondering, how much money average startup spends on UI team: good team, good UX, hight quality of product and design.<p>Any experience? <comment><USER2> It depends.

If your startup is focused on providing a service that is truly innovative and not being done today:

-you may be able to sacrifice on craftsmanship in order to get the MVP out the door

-the fact that you are providing a new and novel service will buy you some time to get the design straightened out.

-it will also give you a mechanism for collecting feedback on the product, including customer criticism/praise and usage data.

HOWEVER, if your service only provides incremental innovation/benefit over competitors - or you are targeting a demographic that heavily prioritizes design in buying decisions:

-you really should invest in the design of your product upfront.

-it doesn't have to be perfect and you should have no expectation of not iterating based on feedback

When making decisions about where to spend design money, always prioritize the resources that are figuring out how the app will work. The screens, controls, and logic of the app make your product. You can skimp on the visual design aspect of things if you need to - but make sure you nail the experience from a flow perspective.

:)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not about the cost, it's about the tradeoffs. That number is necessarily going to be different for every startup because every founder is going to value design differently, and make different compromises with regards to executing on a particular design versus shipping at a particular time versus developing it in a particular way.

Most recently, SFCD posted examples of their pricing. "Strategy & concept" \+ "User experience" \+ "Design" is a quarter to a half of the time spent working on the app. Good design always makes a lot more work for development. [http://sfcd.com/blog/cost/](http://sfcd.com/blog/cost/)

Other examples include Twitterific's response in this StackOverflow question, "Anyone who's done serious iPhone development can tell you there's a lot of design work involved with any project. We had two designers working on that aspect of the product. They worked their asses off dealing with completely new interaction mechanics. Don't forget they didn't have any hardware to touch, either (LOTS of printouts!) Combined they spent at least 25 hours per week on the project. So 225 hours at $150/hr is about $34,000." Other answers are similar. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/209170/how-much-does- it-c...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/209170/how-much-does-it-cost-to- develop-an-iphone-application)

You can reduce the cost and amount of time spent on design if you've done market research and customer development up front. I'm working on an article about that; if you'd like to read a draft, my contact information is discoverable through my profile.</comment>


A Nobel for a Real-World Economist - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-12/a-nobel-for-a-real-world-economist <comment><USER2> While trying to use empirical evidence to evaluate theories is an important way to advance knowledge in a given domain, I worry about how much weight is given to early empirical results found in fields that study chaotic systems. Case in point, look at the past 100 years of study in nutrition science. An entire generation was taught that fats are bad, food policy was designed around this premise, and now we are learning this may not have necessarily been the case. I don't have a solution to this, because studying empirical evidence allows us to identify what variables are missing, expand our scope of study, and evaluate what variables are/aren't relevant. However, designing policies based on empirical evidence from a field that is in its infancy when it comes to data collection is dangerous.

<comment><USER3> I can understand your point, but isn't the answer just "more science"? We want to have a theory based on early data (since there _will_ be a policy, whether explicit or not, so better to base it on our best ideas to date), but it's early and we don't really know what we're doing. Then we get better data and better theories and voila! New consensus, better theory, better policies (in theory ;-).

Maybe advocate more open-mindedness so paradigm shifts don't require extinction of the proponents of the previous theory? Or strive for more policy responsiveness to scientific discoveries (I guess it's pretty clear this would be a Good Thing)?

I think structurally encouraging policies to be built around actual scientific consensus and data (and to keep up with the field) could go a long way.

<comment><USER2> In general I agree that yes, the answer is "more science", although my intuition tells me that some domains are too complex to ever be modeled accurately by humans...meaning writing and managing the codebase to accurately model some domains, even with infinite computing power, would be impossible due to humans limited mental capacities. What those domains are, however, I don't know and don't want to guess. I just suspect they exist.

In regards to your point about policy, if it is implicit (as in findings reported by the media), that's fine. However, as soon as policy is made explicit, either through law, or through national policies such as the food nutrition pyramid, interest groups immediately begin forming to protect said explicit policy. The rules our policymakers have to follow were explicitly designed in a way that makes changing policy a slow, arduous process to protect swift changes that could have dangerous, unknown side effects that every citizen would have to deal with. When we prematurely start explicitly making policies based on empirical results in domains of chaotic systems (i.e., those domains where unknown, new variables appear often and change the course of things), those policies have a higher chance of being wrong, and it becomes (by design) very hard to change those policies later on. This is where my concern is rooted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please read his 'Letters from America' column: [http://scholar.princeton.edu/deaton/letters- america](http://scholar.princeton.edu/deaton/letters-america)

His articles are very approachable and written with a lot of wit and vision for where new research is taking economics.

For example see his take on new research on minimum wage at a time when most economists were very sceptical: [http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/deaton/file...](http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/deaton/files/letterfromamerica_oct1996.pdf)</comment>


Oracle VP: "We have a strategy to run Java inside a Javascript environment" - <AUTHOR> http://cemerick.com/2010/12/12/oracle-vp-we-have-a-strategy-to-run-java-inside-a-javascript-environment/

<comment><USER3> "We have a strategy to promise that everything and anything provided that there is no firm specification or explanation and provided that we provide no date for implementation.

"This gives our customers a sense of security that if anything should happen to become important in the future, they will have purchased from a vendor that has a vision for embracing the technology even if there is no roadmap for actually implementing the technology.

"And although they may not ever end up benefitting from the technology, their careers are safe because they made a decision that, at the time, was prudent, namely to standardize on a technology that was thought to be on its way to becoming ubiquitous from a vendor that articulated a strategy for achieving ubiquity."

tl;dr: "F.U.D."

<comment><USER4> Where is that from? That's not in my post, and not in the podcast transcript…

<comment><USER3> Oh? Gosh, I must have misread it. I admit I was in a hurry, and what he said sounded _so much_ like what other proprietary enterprise vendors say when promising vaporware that I got the exact wording confused.

UPDATE: Look, I am _NOT_ making fun of your post in any way. I think it's fair game to poke a little at his comments given that there has been no other mention of this, no roadmap, nothing. But I respect your post and the fact that you pushed a little further and tried to find some corroboration for his statement.

I'd like to think that _somewhere_ in Oracle-land, there's a white paper from the Sun days talking about this idea, and maybe they're even trying to make it fly right now. And good job teasing that out and asking some intelligent questions about what it may mean.

<comment><USER4> I'm hardly an Oracle (née Sun in this context) booster; i.e. as a Clojure partisan, I'm all too aware of the benign neglect that comes with using the JVM but not Java, and with vaporware (JWebPane, anyone?).

All that said, I'm happy enough to be Charlie Brown and take a run at this football. Cynicism leads to either resigning myself to using Javascript forever for client side stuff, something I just couldn't swallow psychologically.

<comment><USER5> Why do you hate JavaScript so much? You can thoroughly ignore all notions of classes and use it as a lesser scheme.

<comment><USER4> Javascript is a _bad_ language with poor libraries, and I'm _forced_ to use it. I've said before: if it weren't for its distribution, it simply wouldn't be used. If given other choices (emphasis on the plural there), not one developer would opt for Javascript.

"The good parts" of Javascript get a lot of play, but I don't want to have cope by using patterns and avoiding the dull, broken bits that go along for the ride...and I'm surprised that many (most?) other competent developers that wouldn't put up with such compromises in their "real" languages aren't as irritated about Javascript as I have been.

<comment><USER6> Some percentage of developers do choose Javascript among multiple choices: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#Uses_outside_web_pag...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#Uses_outside_web_pages)

<comment><USER7> Stockholm syndrome?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Umm...are there any reasons, other than the JVM, to use Java? I'd much rather write plain old JS (or even better, CoffeeScript) than Java any day.

<comment><USER9> I don't know but this trend of making Javascript a compilation target is making me want to shoot myself (from a compiler-design perspective). JVM->Javascript seems like they're begging me to head over to Oracle and scream "Guys! You're going the WRONG WAY!"

<comment><USER4> Javascript's absolutely ubiquitous distribution characteristics have resulted in all sorts of irrational behaviour.

If the W3C or the browser makers collectively had put some thought into making it possible for other languages to be linked into the client in a sane way (i.e. rather than the existing plugin regime), or defined some proper IL that app authors could compile to, Javascript wouldn't be on its way to being the compilation target for the web.

<comment><USER10> You make it sound like they were incompetent, lazy or evil. Or perhaps I misunderstood you, sorry if so.

But the fact is, they _did_ think a lot about using other languages on the web, and about proper ILs as well. The fact is, there has been no good way to do either, _if_ you want a standards-based platform with multiple compatible implementations.

You can take some existing IL like Java bytecode, but (1) that stuff is patented, and (2) there is no hope of cross-vendor agreement on what that IL should be, and all of them have various issues anyhow (for example, Java and .NET bytecode were designed with static languages in mind).

JavaScript is winning simply because it's there, it works, and everybody supports it. Yes, it has frustrating limitations, but it's hard to see a practical alternative. We will simply need to overcome those limitations - <USER2> that is possible.

<comment><USER4> That was perhaps a little harsh in the phrasing; I wasn't really implying any of those things. I think I am saying that this appears to have been a blind spot on the part of the web standardization crowd and the browser makers. Maybe I'm entirely wrong though, and there were efforts that simply hit hard problems, as you say.

I'd never heard of any discussions around determining a proper IL, though; if you can, a link so relevant MLs and such would be most appreciated.

<comment><USER10> Here's Brendan Eich (creator of JS) talking about something even simpler, a bytecode standard for JS in browsers,

<http://www.aminutewithbrendan.com/pages/20101122>

and here is him talking on HN about JS vs Python, Lua etc. in browsers,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1905155>

<comment><USER4> Many thanks for those. I obviously haven't digested them yet, but I will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I started out writing about how I thought this was insane and by the end of it I had changed my mind and - suspending disbelief and assuming they can pull this off in a reasonable and performant manner - it's actually a pretty clever idea.

Now that Apple, Google and Microsoft have all put the nail in the coffin of applets by not supporting them on their mobile devices Java is looking decidedly shaky as a client side browser technology - especially when you consider that Flash IS shipping to most devices. However Oracle can actually one-up Flash here if they can promise to run inside the browser on any platform. Not too long ago it would have been impossible, but with things like Canvas, WebWorkers and WebSockets they can probably make a reasonable stab at implementing at least the functions of a standard Applet with Javascript.

<comment><USER12> Java as an applet host has been effectively dead for years. I would be _very_ surprised if Oracle were trying to resurrect that. Seems more likely that they'd be trying to replace the server JRE with a server-side JS interpreter.

<comment><USER11> _Seems more likely that they'd be trying to replace the server JRE with a server-side JS interpreter_

Unless you're suggesting they are being willfully misleading I'm not sure how you could interpret that from what they said:

 _...we think it's something that we need to do for the community so we can make Java available more places from tablet devices like the iPad ..._

I think Java applets are a lot less dead than people realize. There are heaps of enterprises that have deployed them for internal apps (essentially a slightly less evil version of ActiveX). I could easily imagine a lot of these places now have executives wandering around with iPads complaining that the payroll app doesn't work on their computer any more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Creating something like a VM or a compiler that produces reliable and fast- enough Javascript from bytecode is hard work, and there is no evidence that it can be done. Microsoft tried something similar with Volta (project discontinued) and when I tried it the results where awful, although it was cool that you could compile CLR bytecode to Javascript: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Volta>

On the other hand creating something less than Java SE would break compatibility and it would not be covered by the patents grant, not to mention difficulties in calling the thing "Java".

Oh wait ...

</comment><comment><USER14> It's turtles all the way down.

<comment><USER15> Oh the amazing things I could write in JavaScript, inside Rhino, inside Java, inside JavaScript.

<comment><USER14> This was _exactly_ my thought. Jesus wept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a certain amount of cluelessness that, when concentrated inside a given company, risks starting a runaway chain reaction that ends up destroying the company and the ecosystem around it.

</comment><comment><USER17> SUP DAWG, WE HEARD YOU LIKE JAVA, SO WE PUT JAVA IN YO JAVA SO YOU CAN EXECUTE JAVA WHILE YOU EXECUTE JAVA

<comment><USER18> I'm glad someone else already posted this so I didn't have to sacrifice my own karma by doing it myself.

<comment><USER17> Damn...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For Oracle's sake, let's hope Google doesn't have patents on GWT.

<comment><USER13> Like a patent on compilers that converts from language A to language B?

No, Oracle has that already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> GWT achieves reasonable speed by only supporting a subset of Java which is already basically compatible with the JavaScript runtime. So, you don't get things like threads, weak references, etc. To support such things (if it's even possible) would require writing (at least pieces of) a JVM in JavaScript. Want weak references? You now can not use JS GC -- you have to synthesize Java objects and write your own GC impl. Good luck getting that to perform.

</comment><comment><USER21> No no no no no no no.</comment>