Running decade-old games in containers - <AUTHOR> https://misha.brukman.net/blog/2020/04/running-decade-old-games-in-containers/ <comment><USER2> You can also use a GUI LXD container for this.

1\. First, setup your host according to the instructions at [https://blog.simos.info/how-to-easily-run-graphics- accelerat...](https://blog.simos.info/how-to-easily-run-graphics-accelerated- gui-apps-in-lxd-containers-on-your-ubuntu-desktop/) You will be creating a LXD profile called `gui` on top of the default LXD installation.

2\. Launch a container with Ubuntu 12.04, an adequately old Ubuntu version, which is still support. Command: lxc launch ubuntu:12.04 mycontainer --profile default --profile gui

3\. Copy the deb package of Machinarium into the container. Command: lxc file push machinarium_20121106-ubuntu_i386.deb mycontainer/home/ubuntu/

3\. Get a shell into the container. Command: lxc exec mycontainer -- sudo --user ubuntu --login

4\. Install the deb package. Commands: sudo dpkg -i machinarium_20121106-ubuntu_i386.deb && sudo apt-get install -f

5\. Run Machinarium. Command: /opt/machinarium/Machinarium

You can reuse the container to install more software, or dedicate a container for each game.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, blog post author here.

Rather than just posting the end result that worked, this is my trial-and- error "walthrough" of building a container from start to finish, in order to run several games from a while back.

Hopefully, this can get you started with playing these and other games again, or discovering them for the first time! Let me know what you think and if you'd like to see more of this in the future.

<comment><USER3> I think this is an excellent post, because you demonstrate an applied use of a bunch of excellent *nix tools, combined with a presentation of the mental model that helped you put it all together.

I am largely self taught, and I didn't touch C/C++ for a long time, so there's a lot of stuff people might take for granted (like the use of ldd), which for a long time I had never encountered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kind words! Glad to hear you enjoyed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm bit befuddled why the author decided to use volumes for /source and /install instead of just installing the game into the container image. That way you wouldn't need to keep the game files floating around on the host system and overall would have more self-contained container. You could even get fancy and use multi-stage container so that the installer wouldn't need to be included in the final image.

The installer could be run under `expect` so that human interaction is not needed.

<comment><USER5> It's covered explicitly in the "goals and principles" section. They're aiming for a reusable environment for older games, not a single-purpose one.

<comment><USER6> They could make a base image and then an image layer that contains the game files only. Now you have a single file image per game with a consistent base.

<comment><USER5> Sure, as a follow-up they could do that.

That's (very clearly declared to be) not the goal of the author though.

<comment><USER6> My point is that by separating the layers it does fulfill the declared goals but in a more portable way. As implemented, there could be hidden dependencies on the local file system or across game installs.

<comment><USER7> But it then prevents redistribution of the container images in a legal manner, because the game files themselves are still under copyright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd really love to see a similar approach but applied to games much older, like the ones you have to pull out a DOSBOX to play, or a Win95 virtual machine. The Win95 games are going to be much more difficult to set up because the VM needs a bunch of stuffs to work properly (sound, video) while the DOSBOX does everything for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Blog post author here.

Yes, I'm planning to do this for much older games in the future, and you're also right that DOSBox does a lot of that for you!

One thing I've noticed is websites that let you play using old DOS games via DOSBox right from your browser (e.g., see [https://www.dosgames.com/](https://www.dosgames.com/)), so I was going to make a blog post for how to do that yourself, from scratch.

Would that be of interest?

<comment><USER8> Yeah that definitely is interesting! Thank you~~

BTW is there some way to perform save/load functionality without log-in? Maybe we can use cookies to identify users? Just a thought as I'm not a programmer...

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that I'm not the owner/developer of that site, so I can only guess how it's implemented there. However, I can give you a general overview for why logins are typically required for such use cases.

While you're correct that cookies is a good way to identify users, they could be faked by other users (to steal or change your saved games), which is why websites typically have user accounts where you have to prove you know something (such as a password) in order to claim to be user id 12345.

If you don't have to prove anything to claim to be user 12345, then some creative users on the internet will write bots that will claim to be every possible user (in sequence), and either trash or delete their saved games, or do something else to affect them in the future.

Thus, we have the need for user accounts on websites to securely identify users and their settings, saved games, shopping carts, purchase history, etc.

If you're interested in learning more, take a look at:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie)

* [https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie)

Hope this helps!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> i managed to run diablo2 (release 2000) on wine in a docker container. with ffmepg streaming it as a video. Was a real eye opener moment to realize what can fit in these things.

<comment><USER4> Why would you need docker for wine?

<comment><USER9> i was curious if i could run diablo2 on my kubernetes clusters.

<comment><USER10> That sounds lovely! Was it playable? I'd love to take a look at the manifests, if you could make them available somewhere.

<comment><USER9> It's kind of playable using XQuartz on mac. But i'm only using that for debugging the setup really. This is intended as a test bed for keras bot experiments, so controls are not important to me.

Main components are wine, ffmpeg, nginx+nginx-ts-module and xvfb. It runs diablo2 and livestreams the screen capture.

I'd love to push this to git or docker, but it's currently littered with blizzards game files. I'm most likely not allowed to share the current state.

I put some files together to get a rough look. I'll try to make it a bit more usefull when i'm done with actual work and not exhausted.

[https://github.com/tuco86/docker-diablo2](https://github.com/tuco86/docker- diablo2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If it runs on 16.04 you could put it in a snap package. I really like it for installing older software. I created a snap package for Scratch For Arduino (S4A), which is a pain to get working natively, but in the snap I can mess with multilib and weird dependencies without it affecting my main install.

I think the advantage of snaps is that you can get easy access to the host system using interfaces. S4A requires access to the USB Serial devices of the host. In snap the snap I just added the `serial` interface but I'm not sure if Docker has an elegant way to do that.

</comment><comment><USER12> having put a few older applications into a Docker container, this article tells it like it is.

docker run: some error. fix this error.

docker run again: another error, rinse and repeat.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been trying to get Obsidian ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_(1997_video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_\(1997_video_game\))) to run under emulation, but so far it's been too choppy to be playable.

<comment><USER14> How did you run it? WineHQ lists compatibility as "Gold", but report is three years old. Might be worth trying it out on latest Wine version.

<comment><USER13> I put the most effort into QEMU. I think I tried Wine briefly first, but don't recall what trouble I ran into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Machinarium and Botanicula on Steam doesn't provide native Linux versions, but at least both games have "Platinum" support on Proton. Found a native Linux copy of Machinarium from HumbleBundle. To get it running on Fedora 31 I had only to install single missing dependency: `sudo yum install libXt.i686`

Well, now I'll probably have to beat the game, while I'm at it.

<comment><USER2> On of the first Humble Bundles for Linux games came with a Deb package of the game.

The game is a Linux i386 binary, which means that installing directly on your host will pull in all sorts of i386 libraries. If you host is amd64, it is quite messy.

<comment><USER15> Looks like Proton does a better job than snap or rpm. I don't get why there is no Linux layer dedicated to translating x32 library calls into x64 calls. The other way around is often impossible I know.

<comment><USER16> Because historically the Linux userland community has a willful disregard for binary, and often source, backwards compatibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does Wine run well from a container? I always found bottles a bit annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Blog post author here.

I haven't tried it myself (yet), but I don't see why Wine wouldn't work from a container, if you propagate access to the display into the container, as I have done in the Dockerfiles in my post.

Here are some quick references I found that suggest this works:

* [https://github.com/scottyhardy/docker-wine](https://github.com/scottyhardy/docker-wine)

* [https://blog.simos.info/how-to-run-wine-graphics-accelerated...](https://blog.simos.info/how-to-run-wine-graphics-accelerated-in-an-lxd-container-on-ubuntu/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this easier than VirtualBox?

<comment><AUTHOR> Blog post author here.

A virtual machine solution (such as VirtualBox) requires more CPU/RAM resources than a container, because you're running an extra copy of the entire operating system, in addition to your base system that you're always running.

A container is much more light-weight than a VM because it relies on the services of the underlying OS and just provides the runtime environment, but not the OS; please see [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vm-vs- containers/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vm-vs-containers/) for more detains on the distinction.

In any case, it would actually be more complex to use a VM, because I would first have to do a full installation of Ubuntu in the VM, before I could get started with installing the game, whereas with Docker, I can just build a container image starting with ubuntu:14.04 as a base, and have it working in seconds (minute or two once I started installing the required i386 packages, but that's unavoidable).

If you look at the end result, it's actually quite a simple Dockerfile, and the installation from start to playing will take you less time than installing a full Ubuntu distribution in a VM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> can those containers run Crysis?

<comment><AUTHOR> Blog post author here.

Looks like Crysis ([https://www.gog.com/game/crysis](https://www.gog.com/game/crysis)) is a Windows-only game, so you'll need a different approach than what I've described in my blog post, which is running Ubuntu inside containers.

If you want to play it on Linux, you may be able to do it using Wine ([https://www.winehq.org/](https://www.winehq.org/)), which you can run directly, or inside a Docker container.

Alternatively, if you are using Windows, you may be able to utilize Windows containers ([https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/virtualization/windowsconta...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/virtualization/windowscontainers/about/)), but that's not what I did in my blog post, so YMMV.

If you do try this out, let us know if it works for you!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is there a Standard Treasury ad on the HN? - <AUTHOR>

No, really, is it something to expect more frequently here on HN? With disabled comments? <comment><USER2> You can see all jobs posted by YC companies by clicking the jobs link at the top of the page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a YC company. That's normal HN policy, and has been for years.</comment>


Try to use "I'm Feeling Lucky" on Google - <AUTHOR> http://google.com <comment><USER2> Is it gone?

<comment><USER3> Worked fine for me when I just tried it.

Dunno what tf this is about...</comment></comment>


Paul Buchheit's Prediction: ChromeOS will be killed next year - <AUTHOR> http://friendfeed.com/paul/1af77944/prediction-chromeos-will-be-killed-next-year-or <comment><USER2> I hope not. ChromeOS sounds very promising, particularly because it's so clean (UX-wise), so replacing/merging with Android sounds like bad news for the ChromeOS user experience...</comment>


Number of servers for Flickr, fotolog, wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://www.paragon-cs.com/wordpress/?p=144

<comment><USER2> good data - presentation was hard to follow, though. would've been easier to understand if it were presented in a table/grid.

</comment><comment><USER3> I found it interesting that FB uses 2.5" drives in RAID 10 config. I would imagine the lower power of the drives makes up for the increased cost.

I would think that they're significantly slower, but it looks like Seagate makes a reasonably priced 10,000RPM SCSI 2.5" drive.

<comment><USER4> Interesting about the 10KRPM 2.5" SCSI drives. How bad is the power consumption for equivalent SATA configurations?

AdWords used pretty much the same rig for MySQL servers (RAID 10) although the drives were all 15K 3.5" SCSI drives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Facebook and flickr seem to be about equivalently efficient; Facebook is about 10x bigger and uses about 10x as many servers. Fotolog seems much more efficient than either though; it's about the same size as flickr, but uses only 1/3 as many servers.

</comment><comment><USER6> YouTube SuSE 9 ?</comment>


A rare look inside the secretive world of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-german-hacker-offers-a-rare-look-inside-the-secretive-world-of-julian-assange-and-wikileaks/2018/01/17/e6211180-f311-11e7-b390-a36dc3fa2842_story.html <comment><USER2> I have flagged this article. All paywalled articles should be posted with a link to a nonpaywalled version or it excludes a nontrivial amount of users.</comment>


Show HN: Personal Analytics Tool - <AUTHOR> http://powerup.io

<comment><USER2> Units and Email are overlaid on third page.</comment>


Facetime for the Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/

<comment><USER3> I'm definitely not suggesting that Facetime is, or will be, a failure.

Thinking about it, however, reminded me of a passage from Infinite Jest about the failure of video chat.

 _(1) It turned out there there was something terribly stressful about visual telephone interfaces that hadn't been stressful at all about voice-only interfaces. Videophone consumers seemed suddenly to realize that they'd been subject to an insidious but wholly marvelous delusion about conventional voice-only telephony._

...

EDIT: Instead of that wall of text, here's a link to the rest of that passage. Sorry about that. [http://stevereads.com/weblog/2010/06/07/iphone-4-facetimeinf...](http://stevereads.com/weblog/2010/06/07/iphone-4-facetimeinfinite- jest-mashup/)

<comment><USER4> Facetime, and video-phony in general, fits into a continuum of communication strategies. When you want to _see_ someone, you video them. When you only want to hear them, you audio them. When you don't want to hear them you text them.

Then there's the whole time-shifting thingie. What I would like now is the video equivalent of an email, voice mail, or text message. I _could_ record a video, and email it, but...

<comment><USER5> I agree, FaceMail or something would be incredibly nice, especially as I'm not always available to answer a video call, but would still like to see what's up eventually.

I guess it would be used like like YouTube, only privately. That is, often you see an event and video record it for sharing with others. FaceTime would let you share this live, and leaving a message seems a natural progression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We just downloaded it and tried it (bringing my total Facetime experiences to two, both of which occurred about 10 feet from the person on the other end). The interface is more iOS-y than normal for OS X. The picture quality was pretty good (the Mac being wired, iPhone 4 being wireless of course).

Simple to use, pretty good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there a reason they couldn't have just folded this feature into iChat?

<comment><USER8> I wish they had-

It loses several major features of iChat sharing- Screensharing, replaceable backgrounds, Multi-person chat...

<comment><USER9> Which are all features that would ruin FaceTime.

<comment><USER8> How so? Honestly? Why would it ruin Facetime, but not ruin iChat?

<comment><USER9> I bet there are already more non-geek users of FaceTime than iChat because it's so approachable. Adding features like those caters to the wrong audience. The beauty of FaceTime is its simplicity.

(This sounds like an Apple fanboy thing to say, but I'm really not.)

<comment><USER10> I would also say using iChat also dilutes the FaceTime brand.

<comment><USER11> In the event video, the FaceTime icon had replaced the iChat icon's traditional position on the dock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Facetime could become a strong competitor to Skype once a Windows client is available as the UI seems very polished and well "integrated". Now only if my parents had a Mac so I can test it out. They always seem to have issues getting video chat working on Skype/Windows.

<comment><USER13> Not really.

Skype is strong in businesses. In the office-setting people first and foremost use the text-chat, then the _audio_ calls, then the conference calls. Video calls come dead last. I wouldn't be surprised if even desktop sharing is used more than the video feature.

<comment><USER14> The desktop sharing of skype has a long way to go to be used seriously. I can only assume from your comment that you haven't used it. They may have their audio codec down, and the video codec works for live video, but not for content. It's the same deal with JPEG for text for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> called the wife from the mac to her iphone... she didn't know the difference. later she called me back on facetime to the pc and it just popped up - <USER2> not bad!

</comment><comment><USER16> Accounts are tied to the email address on your Apple ID. Interesting way of getting around having to create another IM account.

<comment><USER8> It's also portable to when there is a version of FaceTime for Android/etc. They had originally claimed it to be an open standard.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, has there been any progress on publishing specs?

<comment><USER18> According to the presentation, it's supposed to be made a standard. I'm assuming this would hit the IETF's Audio/Video transport working group, so that'd be where to keep a lookout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My favorite feature of FaceTime for the Mac: it stays full screen even when you tab away to do work on another monitor.

FaceTime is now my preferred video conferencing software.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why set the minimum OS to Snow Leopard? That sounds a bit of a far-fetched requirement for some videoconferencing software.

<comment><USER21> My guess is that it uses some newer APIs which were introduced in 10.6. This may be because they wanted to use Grand Central Dispatch (better multi-core support), a later addition to Core Graphics or simply an API which gave their GUI the more iOS feel compared to the GUI elements in 10.5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would be exciting if I'm proven wrong, but I'm not buying the hype about video chat.

Even if/when I'm able to video chat anyone from my iPhone without being on wifi, I still don't imagine it being terribly useful. And the few times I've tried using video chat in a business setting have not been very fruitful.

<comment><USER23> Video chat is just one of those nice-to-haves in my opinion.

I work remotely a lot and always choose audio chat over video chat. Video chatting, in that context, just doesn't add anything for me.

Video chat was great when my girlfriend was living abroad for a couple of months though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "the call rings through on every Mac you own, even if face time isn't running"

Does this sound just a little too intrusive to anyone else?

<comment><USER25> Have you heard of a telephone? Do you know how they work?

You can turn it off in the preferences.

<comment><USER26> You just made me laugh out loud, which I rarely do while sitting at a computer. I honestly thought rflrob's comment made a lot of sense, until I read yours.

I have to say though: I absolutely loathe doorbells and ringing phones, they stress me out. Ideally, my doorbell would have a vibrate mode, making the floor gently purr.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I just wish there was a Facetime API.

</comment><comment><USER28> I like the icon. I am really glad to see they didn't go the same direction as the new iTunes icon.

</comment><comment><USER29> Judging from this FaceTime app and the new iLife apps, it looks like there will be all sorts of new iOS-like UI goodies for Cocoa 10.7 developers to use.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is this different from yahoo messenger's video calls?

<comment><USER31> iPhone <\--> Desktop

<comment><USER32> Both have platform limitations at this time:

Facetime: iPhone <\--> Mac

Yahoo Messenger : iPhone <\--> PC

<comment> contol-m Nope. Yahoo Messenger video chat works on a Mac as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, it mistakenly points to iWork 09 trial download for now.

<comment><USER33> First 2 times it didn't work, then I got it: [http://appldnld.apple.com/FaceTime/061-9589.20101020.Mbgt5/F...](http://appldnld.apple.com/FaceTime/061-9589.20101020.Mbgt5/FaceTime.dmg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Use the bottom link. The top link is pointing to iWork 09

</comment><comment><USER35> Can't get it to connect. @SteveStreza reports his doesn't work on a wired connection at all.</comment>


Random Forests for Complete Beginners - <AUTHOR> https://victorzhou.com/blog/intro-to-random-forests/ <comment><USER2> My thesis is related to trees, forests, and ensemble of forests.

This is pretty concise but mostly for decision tree but only half of it.

CART is the framework for decision tree for classification and regression. This article only addresses the Classification part which usually use Gini which is a class of split that split along parallel axises (there are oblique trees). The regression part uses more traditional statistical linear regression to calculate split point (SSTO).

Very light on Random Forests though, doesn't talk about out of bagging, implication of bootstrap and ordinal data, etc.. but overall I think it's a neat introduction.

> we only try a subset of the features,

You bootstrap features without replacement at every split. Instead of just bootstrapping rows/observations like in bagging.

The concept of weak learners ensemble together to become a strong learner is done by Dr. Ho work under her paper Random Subspace where she does it with decision tree and basically proposed Random Forest before Dr. Leo Breiman (both independently came to Random Forest). Her advisor have the theoretical paper for proof of weak learner, stocastic discrimination.

<comment><USER3> is there a better tutorial/course for a beginner into this field ?

the end goal not being academia, but being able to think and write _reasonable_ production code.

<comment><USER4> I wrote this regression tree tutorial a few years back that might be a good complement to the tutorial above since it covers regression instead of classification and goes on to talk about bagging vs random forest, out-of-bag samples, and tuning parameters: [https://github.com/savagedata/regression- tree-tutorial](https://github.com/savagedata/regression-tree-tutorial) I wrote it at the start of my career and haven't shared it beyond my study group, so I'm happy to hear feedback.

<comment><USER2> It's a really good tutorial.

I like how you talk about Conditional Inference. My thesis is suppose to overcome the brute force of exhaustive search for best splits that Random Forest does (I use Dr. Loh's GUIDE trees) using statistical methods.

> Many implementations of random forest default to 1/3 of your predictor > variables.

This is interesting. I hear it was sqroot(total number of predictors).

> Ensemble methods combine many individual trees to create one better, more > stable model.

I think stable can be more clarify to having good training accuracy and low generalize error (unseen data error rate) compare to individual tree. This is what Dr. Ho talk about with forest.

But other than that I think it's an awesome tutorial.

I've seen what other tree and forest do for better generalization with unseen data is pruning is using CV and choosing 0.5 to 1.0 std error as a cut off point. That may be a thing to talk about if you are interested in that.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the useful feedback! I'll have to look up GUIDE trees.

> This is interesting. I hear it was sqroot(total number of predictors).

I was probably looking at the randomForest R package documentation [1], which says:

> mtry Number of variables randomly sampled as candidates at each split. Note > that the default values are different for classification (sqrt(p) where p is > number of variables in x) and regression (p/3)

I checked the H2O implementation of random forest [2] and they use the same defaults.

I'll add a note about the one third default being specific to regression since that seems like an important distinction.

[1] [https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/randomForest/version...](https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/randomForest/versions/4.6-14/topics/randomForest)

[2] [http://docs.h2o.ai/h2o/latest-stable/h2o-docs/data- science/d...](http://docs.h2o.ai/h2o/latest-stable/h2o-docs/data- science/drf.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've started studying ML (as someone who's hoping to transition at 47 to a different career from teaching and music), and some concepts I've found easy to get, others not so much (I'm old, so give me a break!). Often I need to have a concept explained in a different manner before I'll have a 'Oh, I see!' moment, and because I don't have a great grasp on the maths needed (which I'm working on, but it's s-l-o-w), as soon as equations I can't get appear, I tend to lose focus and think I can't do it.

This post covers things that I've seen in the past, and seems to sum up my internal understanding of the concept, which is good for me as reading through it I had a number of 'see, I do get it' moments. The only criticism I have of it is that it seems to gloss over what differences the trees within the random forest have - as I understand it, they are all slightly different, and this gives them greater accuracy?

Anyway, thanks for posting it - I'll read the other posts when I get a chance.

<comment><USER6> > it seems to gloss over what differences the trees within the random forest > have - as I understand it, they are all slightly different, and this gives > them greater accuracy?

They _kinda_ cover it in the section in 3.1 and 3.2 with Bagging and Bagging -> RandomForest, but it'd be good for them to explain Boosted Trees here as well.

As far as I understand it, random forests are an aggregation of trained trees based on randomly sampled data points from the original data set. It doesn't necessarily make them more accurate on the training dataset, but it makes them more generalised and less likely to overfit ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfitting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfitting)), because the different trees are likely to focus on different characteristics of the dataset.

Boosted trees do become more accurate, as they resample, but give more priority to data points that weren't correctly classified by the earlier models.

<comment><USER7> Just to add here that the columns and not just the rows are also sampled at each node so the trees are deliberately prevented from learning too much. This helps improve diversity and reduce overfitting. This is typically around 1/3rd of the number of columns and controlled by the mtry parameter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey, Author here. If you're new to ML you might also like my introduction to Neural Networks: [https://victorzhou.com/blog/intro-to-neural- networks/](https://victorzhou.com/blog/intro-to-neural-networks/)

Discussion of my neural networks post on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19320217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19320217)

<comment><USER9> Great contributions. Great work and I ought not ask for more, but gosh if you could put in real world examples with code it would be great.

<comment><USER8> Thanks!

When you say "real world examples", what do you have in mind? A lot of "real world" uses of random forests are basically just directly calling scikit-learn or something like that. In my neural network post, I implemented a simple neural network from scratch because I felt like it'd be valuable for beginners, but I wouldn't call that "real world".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While there's nothing wrong with random forests, they're a bit of a red flag for me as they're easy to implement without any real understanding of what's going on. A lot of junior data scientists just default to saying random forest to solve any problem because it tends to have the most predictive power of the models they're comfortable with. That's a bad sign.

<comment><USER11> I am probably one of the junior DS you are referring to. But, I genuinely want to know the reason of using anything other than gradient boost tree to do classification on structured data.

<comment><USER12> Is there a place that tells you: If you have this type of data and want this kind of answer, here's the best algorithm (and why)??

<comment><USER13> [https://scikit- learn.org/stable/tutorial/machine_learning_ma...](https://scikit- learn.org/stable/tutorial/machine_learning_map/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most of the post (~80%) is actually about decision trees: principles, how to train, choosing splits etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> this is actually a really good explanation because it shows in simple pictures and words the concepts so there is no confusion. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was so hoping more like "random cities" and "random islands" where the forest is a collection of tall flora to be rendered for the viewer's/gamer's pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for posting this - from a fellow HH member who saw this yesterday!</comment>


DOM elements with ID's are global variables - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/buntine/dom-elements-with-ids-are-global-variables <comment><USER2> Great find! Not only do element IDs become global variables but so do names if they're on one of these tags: embed, form, img, and object. At least it happened when I tested in Firefox and Chrome (I didn't test it in Internet Explorer).

The standard also says that it should happen for the name attribute on a frameset element, but that didn't work when I tried. [https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#named-access-on-the-window- obj...](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#named-access-on-the-window-object)</comment>


Banned from a meeting because of GDPR by the Romanian Ministry of Education - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/AFiscutean/status/1073243007376416769 <comment><USER2> She also has a Facebook post with more info here: [https://www.facebook.com/andrada.fiscutean/posts/10217766665...](https://www.facebook.com/andrada.fiscutean/posts/10217766665427316)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> First case here: [https://www.occrp.org/en/40-press-releases/presss- releases/8...](https://www.occrp.org/en/40-press-releases/presss- releases/8875-occrp-strongly-objects-to-romania-s-misuse-of-gdpr-to-muzzle- media)

</comment><comment><USER3> Romania is probably the only country in EU that is moving back instead of going forward. The corruption is killing this country and the vast majority of the people are to weak and greed, so they accept the salary and pension increases to stay quiet... Too bad, in a world with so much access to information and especially history, the populism and socialism still thrive in a country like Romania.

PS: I am from Romania.

<comment><USER4> > _Romania is probably the only country in EU that is moving back_

Poland and Hungary are teetering while Austria, Italy, Germany, Sweden and France grapple with varieties of fascist and neo-Nazi ascdendancy.

<comment><USER5> Also, the UK is about to commit national suicide.

<comment><USER6> That sounds needlessly apocalyptic to me. If the British are lucky their financial industry will falter a little and the rest of the country will benefit from a reduction in the Dutch disease that has been plaguing their economy.

<comment><USER7> Plaguing what? Bar the 2008 crisis, the UK economy has been pretty healthy since the '90s at least. It's the reason it attracts a high number of economic migrants from the rest of the EU, it holds a lot of European and global HQs and so on.

Of course, manufacturing is what it is; but Brexit won't magically make China disappear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What specifically about the 2016/679 directive allows the government to fine a company or individual for not revealing their source?

<comment><USER4> GDPR's investigation and mediation sections were broadly written. Whenever I brought this up, it was thrown down with variants of "you're American; European governments can be trusted to be nice."

<comment><USER9> This sort of obvious misapplication of law can't be prevented by anything sort of making entirely pointless laws nobody will bother with.

It _is_ a pretty hollow objection to say that "this law is being misused in regions where law is applied arbitrarily!".

<comment><USER4> > _This sort of obvious misapplication of law can 't be prevented_

Sure it can. Complain-and-investigate frameworks are among the more onerous regulatory designs. America features them in its securities regulations, but that's because nothing short of a high-calibre solution was working. Other options include absolute liability, negotiated settlement, reporting & monitoring, subsidized mediation & arbitration and combinations thereof.

If one really wanted a complain-and-investigate model, a single European enforcement body would have been superior to letting each of the EU's members interpret and enforce the regulation to their preferences.

These issues were brought up early, often and loudly. Unfortunately, opposition to the law was repeatedly conflated with opposition to its aims.

<comment><USER9> She was physically prevented from _attending a meeting_ where they would discuss if persons had cheated to get their PhD by invoking GDPR, that is pants-on-fire misuse. This really has _nothing_ to do with the framework chosen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Incorrect title. They're forbidding a journalist to join a policy meeting because of GDPR, which makes zero sense...

What became of their other attempt at abuse? Can't find anything new about it.

<comment><USER11> We've updated the title from the submitted "Romanian government abusing GDPR (again) to go after journalists" to something closer to the original text.</comment></comment>


Mozilla announces $100M grant program - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90403645/mozilla-and-creative-commons-want-to-reimagine-the-internet-without-ads-and-they-have-100m-to-do-it <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool my biggest problem with micropayments is friction when browsing and friction for managing subscriptions. Integrating it into the browser should make it much more automatic.

It's kind of a chicken and egg problem where publishers wont benefit until readers have it and vice versa. I hope this grant results in a killer app that generates some critical mass for the standard.

The founder of Coil is from Ripple cryptocurrency. For more information check out [http://coil.com](http://coil.com) and the payment request standard here [http://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/](http://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the funding being distributed in USD or Ripple?</comment></comment>


How SOPA Could Ruin My Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2011/12/16/how-sopa-could-ruin-my-life/

<comment><USER2> What the US government and many other non computer-savvy people in power need to realize is that _linking is speech_!

One of my first employers was at a public television station. In his mind, he had to ask the other party permission to link to them. That is thinking of a link as a physical thing, as if it was a copper wire or a metal house key. It's not. It's just information. Needing permission to link to something is exactly like needing permission to talk about something. That shouldn't be. If we live in a society that believes in free speech, we should all be free to link to anything we want to!

<comment><USER3> Free speech has many exceptions. So no, you shouldn't be able to link to anything you want to. Just like free speech, there are many exceptions about what you can link to which are already illegal.

<comment><USER4> That's like saying I can't walk out of a public art gallery and go tell a friend there's a cool landscape portrait by a famous artist hanging on the 3rd floor. That's linking.

By definition, if it's on the internet, it's public facing and therefore publicly available knowledge. Linking is simply telling others, hey, look over here for publicly available information.

Now, if you link to something illegal or perverse, depending on content, that could result in interest from the authorities but that's because you, the user, made a personal decision to directly affiliate yourself with that content via a link. The mere act of linking to publicly available information, should not in and of itself, be illegal or prohibited.

<comment><USER5> Really? That's the best analogy you could come up with? It's more like a newspaper printing advertisements that there will be stolen radios for sale or prostitutes behind the Walmart on Saturday.

<comment><USER2> Poor analogy. Unless there are other mechanisms in place, a link doesn't serve an advertising purpose any more or less than a purely informational one. I would like for a newspaper engage in activities like exposing fences or street prostitution. I believe that's called "reporting."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a shakedown by Members of Congress, plain and simple. Internet companies have made billions of dollars in an unregulated market but have not paid off Congressmen/Senators through campaign contributions, lobbyists, creation of significant PACs, 527 committees -- things which all appeal to a politician's self-interest. Hollywood has outspent internet companies, paid hundreds of millions of dollars through direct and indirect campaign financing and actually gives a demonic benefit to the greedy politicians by essentially paying them off.

If internet companies want to do anything, I think they should get off their butts and outspend the heck out the idiotic music/movie industry so politicians can see there is a monetary return from internet companies. To be naive and think that SOPA will go away because of its inherent stupidity is wrong. You have to fight.

You have to take action and battle for protection of the internet. You need to pay Congress the "protection money" in this sickening game of soft-extortion. Understand that Congress has power, and can exercise it either way, as long as you appeal to the politicians' self-interest.

It's sad but true.

Save the internet, stop SOPA now!

<comment><USER7> > Internet companies have made billions of dollars in an unregulated market > but have not paid off Congressmen/Senators through campaign contributions, > lobbyists, creation of significant PACs, 527 committees -- things which all > appeal to a politician's self-interest.

This is completely false; Internet companies are regulated by the DMCA, which provides them safe harbor from private lawsuits related to copyright infringement. If the DMCA did not exist, they would have been sued into oblivion by the content companies long ago.

There are a lot of reasons to oppose SOPA but let's not pretend that the Internet is unregulated.

<comment><USER6> > This is completely false; Internet companies are regulated by the DMCA, > which provides them safe harbor from private lawsuits related to copyright > infringement

Look, I don't want to get in an argument but the DMCA is a joke. You know it and I know it. If it really worked, do you really think these idiot music/film companies would try to pass SOPA? The DMCA is supposed to protect IP and it doesn't work.

The internet is one of the least-regulated industries in the United States. Pardon me for saying "unregulated" - but ti basically is. Also, sales taxes are the exception to the rule right now. Last time I checked -- that's a whole lot of freedom.

I pride myself on seeing things the way they are and I know -- Congress is like a legal protection racket. If you actually want to do something, the big players need to pay the protection money. Hollywood execs paid $91M in lobbying for SOPA. How much more was paid in other methods of political support as well?

Our (consumer internet) industry needs to step to the plate. We make a lot of money but want to pretend we're somehow immune from the idiocy of Washington -- we're not. Reid Hoffman, Jack Dorsey and Sergey Brin need to wake up and realize that writing a letter to Congress isn't going to change anything...

Money is the only form of communication that matters in politics.

Let's stand together and fight SOPA now.

<comment><USER8> Media companies dislike the DMCA not because it is a joke, but because it hasn't eradicated piracy. Unfortunately it would be practically impossible to stop piracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This kind of weak-minded opposition actually makes me think that I'd rather see SOPA proceed as-is. If SOPA were amended with some provisions for cargo- cult "due process", most of the corporate opposition would disappear but we'd still be left with the same broken internet.

> _It's hard to make a coherent case that you should be able to download a > full movie or album completely for free_

Actually, it's hard to make a coherent case that it's even possible to police such downloading when universal computing devices and networks exist. The internet community needs to wake up and realize that the copyright cartels (and political groupthink, in general) are their mortal enemies, stop kowtowing to them, and _write code_ to defend themselves (and push these realizations to the masses).

<comment><USER10> Exactly. We need to put up some opposition to this in court, but eventually just decentralize all levels of the internet. The real fight is when using that code (Namecoin, TOR, etc) is becoming illegal. Then we have a final legal battle to fight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is bad. I would have thought the overwhelming stupidity of this bill would have, if not killed it, then at least signaled its demise by now. The so-called "nuclear option" of everyone who is opposed to SOPA blacking out their sites is looking like it might be a necessity.

<comment><USER12> The article was dated a few weeks ago. Hopefully the tide is turning.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hacker News in real-time - <AUTHOR> http://hackerstream.com

<comment><USER3> Neat. "Shortlist" might not be the most apt title for the watched threads, though. . . calling it something like "Watchlist" or even just "Watch" might make it more clear at first glance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, thanks. Done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well designed site, but if you do not mind my saying, what prevents me from returning to hackerstream.com is that the text in the left column moves while I am reading it. (I'd be OK BTW with my having to hit a refresh button to get an update.)

But thanks for trying to improve the "HN ecosystem".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I've looked at a few options for that problem. There's twitter's approach, which is to never update the page, just a link at the top. There's the friendfeed approach, which is a pause button. Hackerstream's approach - clicking on a post to copy into the shortlist - <USER2> experimental. Do you like one of those more than the others? Is there a fourth (or fifth) option I haven't thought of?

I'm still not convinced the shortlist is pulling its weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be great if every website have an open analytics section where you can see a live stream of activity across the website, a map with real time user activity... i don't know it would be cool.

</comment><comment><USER6> With what and how did you implement this?

<comment><USER7> /second. Curious to know the tech behind it. Node? Or something else?

<comment><USER8> It's Rails and it's polling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love it! You've actually managed to make HN harder to navigate away from!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'd love to hear gripes over the next few days. Hold on, let me add a contact link to the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When we (Digg) released our Streaming API, I threw together a similar site for Digg. You can see it at <http://tigris.duruk.net> and the code lives at <http://github.com/cduruk/tigris>

It's essentially a Apache redirect and bunch of JavaScript.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm getting a 502 Bad Gateway message...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, traffic issues :/ Hitting reload seems to help some of the time. I didn't expect this much interest. Trying to fix now..

Update: should be fixed now. Let me know if you see it again.

<comment><USER13> You post a HN related site on HN, you better be ready for some action! :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Feedback: Allow me to provide it without firing up my e-mail client.

<comment><USER13> Also:

\- Let me turn comments on and off, globally and for each story.

\- Adding an item to the watchlist adds only that comment, unless I click on the parent story in the stream. I want to add the parent story to the watchlist, not the comment. Besides, it also opens the link to the HN thread. Not sure if I want that.. I mean, two functions in one.

\- "new" and "comments" take me to HN. Perhaps they should have a functionality inside your site. Maybe related to the previous point.

\- Favicon? Perhaps "Yrt"? (Y real time)

Great work!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great comments. Watch this space :)

Re UI for 'new' and 'comments': It's a good question how immersive an experience this alternative UI should be. Our initial ambition was just an alternative view, a different random sampling of HN, to augment the HN UI rather than replace it.[1] This is why the UI mimics HN, and we link back everywhere that it makes sense. But this exchange has given me some ideas to expand my ambitions, so thank you.

[1] Especially since we can't let you vote or reply directly on hackerstream (due to security restrictions in browser AJAX).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It wasn't updating in real time for me in Chrome, I'll give it another try later. Sweet idea!

<comment><USER14> Oh I see, it's polling every 30 seconds :)

I've tried Orbited on Rails with success, it does fake comet with an easy-to- use Javascript API so you can push messages to subscribed clients. Also looked at Hookbox, which is by the same guy who made Orbited. They're both realllly easy to integrate and use in Rails, and Hookbox can be used from the public HostedHookbox service, meaning you don't actually have to install a Hookbox server if you just want to try it out.

^In case you'd like to add a push feel to this

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip! Yeah we may move to that (and I want to try it out :) but for HN's content-creation frequency polling seems to suffice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Obligatory: oh great, another way for me to be completely distracted by HN while at work!

</comment><comment><USER16> Sweet!

It would be interesting to have a "pop-out" for my watch list, like a G-Chat has - so I can have that little watch window as an applet of sorts on the screen to the right.

Is there any way to indicate when someone replies to a comment I made? (An orangered copy ala reddit)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's a good idea. We still have no customization based on your username, but it's on the roadmap.</comment></comment>


Review my webapp (#2): sharebookbox.com - <AUTHOR>

I have this small side-project: a widget for book collections linking to Amazon, targeted primarily at non-technical users.
It is quite trivial, originally I coded it in a weekend to learn some javascript, but it was picked up by a few users (mostly schools and libraries), and I would like to improve it.
I would be curious what features would it need to have to make it more usable, how could the design be improved. If someone uses similar widgets, what features are those missing?
Last time I asked for feedback, someone suggested that it should allow people to plug in their own amazon-id. That is allowed now, so users can actually make money with the widget. What else is missing?
link: sharebookbox.com
in use (my own page): www.lkozma.net <comment><USER2> Clickable link: <http://sharebookbox.com/>

Nice widget!

For the UI, consider making the steps the user should take to create the widget more clear. You could have "Step 1", "Step 2", "Step N" spelled out, for instance.

Also, I wasn't sure why I needed to enter in a password to get the widget code. To me, a password means a user account is involved somehow, though that's clearly not the case here. Perhaps the word "password" could be replaced. Or an explanation can be offered.

I applaud the effort to learn JavaScript. It's a good language to know. Although many embeddable widgets also use document.write like you do, this has some performance implications. Here's an article with more info about that: [http://www.schillmania.com/content/entries/2009/defer- script...](http://www.schillmania.com/content/entries/2009/defer-script- loading/)

Google Analytics recently implemented a performance improvement that's related to this issue: [http://searchengineland.com/google-analytics-releases-new- fa...](http://searchengineland.com/google-analytics-releases-new-faster- tracking-code-42367)

For further JavaScript geekery, you can consider something similar.

Lastly, you can try that pop-up layer from KISSinsights (<http://www.kissinsights.com/>) that's been popping up (no pun intended) on various sites lately. It's basically a survey with which you can ask your audience whatever questions you'd like. Perhaps you can get some more feedback that way. And Andrew Warner from Mixergy reported that it gave more feedback than GetSatisfaction.com: <http://mixergy.com/kissinsights-so-far/>

I hope this helps. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, very good suggestions. Also I'll look into the deferred javascript trick.</comment></comment>


I Left a Buddhist Retreat in Handcuffs - <AUTHOR> https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a25651175/the-other-side-of-paradise-how-i-left-a-buddhist-retreat-in-handcuffs/ <comment><USER2> This article is an important read for any meditation enthusiast who isn't aware that it's not all rainbows and ponies. Intense meditation does affect brain structure, and how it affects different individuals can be unpredictable. This is why some people will need extra support.

I have done intense meditation before and became a much calmer person. I experienced a level of peace and harmony that felt like my mind was a spontaneously orchestrated symphony. I also experienced the so-called "dark night" that was as deep and expansive as the universe itself. I experienced what arises from "the void": anything and everything. I was able to reconcile all of these experiences by coming to my own understanding of what the "The Middle Way" in Buddhism is.

Mental journeys (or 'spiritual journeys') can be just as treacherous as physical journeys; they can be transformational in many ways, but sometimes people get lost and cannot find their way back.

<comment><USER3> I think what you mean by dark night is the last chapter in The Mind Illuminated.

Being red pilled with the literature doesn't make you immune to the "dark night"

<comment><USER2> I was referring to the "dark night" Dr Daniel Ingram expounds upon in his writings (which I'm familiar with) and is referred to in the article. I haven't read The Mind Illuminated, so I'm not sure if it's the same thing.

Regardless, there is no such thing as "red pilled" when it comes to all of this, and nobody who engages in intense meditation is immune. I went through it once and that was quite enough.

<comment><USER3> > haven't read The Mind Illuminated, so I'm not sure if it's the same thing.

Basically it says at the end of the book telling us about: suffering, impeanence and no self. He tell us we should notice we become angry and enraged like a nihilist. (1) The idea is that meditation and absorption is the only salvation to that , meaning without these skills you will be bound to suffer for real.

>Regardless, there is no such thing as "red pilled" when it comes to all of this, and nobody who engages in intense meditation is immune. I went through it once and that was quite enough.

Well I am sorry for the language, as a lay Buddhist myself keeping up with the discourses, middle length,combined of the Buddha and other sutras. They are nihilistic and don't talk about the meaning of life but just about salivation from suffering.

(1) Buddha was the first nihilist in the world. Source wikipedia.

<comment><USER2> So the book that you mention takes things to the extreme, and this is what often happens with belief systems of any sort. Personally, I have found meditation on the three characteristics (unsatisfactoriness, impermanence, and non-self) to be useful. Why? So I can go on craving things I can't have, mourning losses, and getting caught up in my own ego, only without being completely overwhelmed by it all.

Life without suffering is not life, and those who truly believe in the complete removal of suffering will indeed find their way to nihilism.

<comment><USER4> beautifully put! If I might add - the first noble truth is that life is suffering, to which, the noble eightfold path only offers a temporary remedy.

It has been a long time since I've been on the path, but I still remember the beauty of the inner silence; however I also remember how the silence becomes the void that eats away at the world we dream, leaving only the cold and naked meaningless of the world - i still remember how it was easy to become one with nothing instead of becoming one with everything.

I also wanted to say something more regarding Karuna, however that would probably be even more superfluous and pointless than my comment already is.

<comment><USER5> IMHO, I think the translation "life is suffering" is inaccurate enough to be particularly negative/nihilistic. Though, maybe "pain is an inescapable part of life" is too much the other way, not sure.

"Life is dukkha" seems to mean so much more than that. Especially as the Buddha expounds on multiple types of Dukkha, only one of which is suffering/pain. The other two, being impermanence and conditioned states.

<comment><USER4> One could go even further and say that life can not be easily defined by a single term; hence the three marks of existence, which also seem to be reflected in a way in a western ethos. But even these three marks, in my humblest ans undereducated opinion, are just an entrypoint to describing the human condition.

It is probably most safe to say: "life is such". But that's akin to saying nothing; perhaps in this lies the absolute truth?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Meditation retreats sound interesting, but they've always struck me as tending to have a fairly grueling, bizarre schedule- awake and breakfast at ~6AM, dinner at 4pm, lights out at 9PM (and no meal until breakfast the next day.) It strikes me as the _worst_ setup for long meditation sessions- getting everyone sleepy and hungry and out of sorts. That it would send susceptible people off the deep end doesn't sound surprising.

As a sort of "negative control," I wonder if psychosis is as frequently triggered by other taxing programs; for instance, army basic training? There too people are forced to sleep on an artificial schedule, meals are regimented and at potentially unfamiliar times, and most of the day is spent in unfamiliar, effortful activity (but all of which is probably diametrically opposite to meditation.)

<comment><USER7> Lack of sleep, sudden change of routine, total immersion in a new mindset, and withholding food is the classic playbook of cult indoctrination. The point is to weaken existing barriers that would otherwise keep people aloof, disengaged, and instead create a total experience. I'm not claiming that a meditation retreat is a cult indoctrination, at least not most of the time. It does however share some commonalities with indoctrination, and interrogation. If your goal is radical change, a breakthrough emotional or otherwise, this is an ancient and proven system to make it happen.

Boot camp has some things in common, because it is quite the indoctrination, but they feed you well, and focus more on breaking down the ego and forming a group identity and esprit de corps. Cults focus on breaking people mentally and creating dependence. Interrogation tends to focus on disorientation and a need to bond with the interrogator. Meditation retreats focus on breaking existing habits and perspectives and instilling new ones.

Similar tracks, different intentions and outcomes. Another difference is that in the military you're screened for prexisting psychological issues, and they have a vested interest in that screening process. You also have trained observers at all stages who know to look for signs of deterioration. In a retreat you have no screening, no such resources, and no training in recognizing early signs of psychosis.

<comment><USER8> There's never been any sleep or food deprivation at any retreat I've been to. They keep an early schedule because that's what they used to. The routine that parent described is basically normal for your typical early bird.

<comment><USER9> It's basically the standard monk's schedule. Might be a shock for late sleepers used to eating and snacking throughout the day. Enough of a shock to set off some people. The Thais have an idiom for it which translates to "allergic to the robe". It happens to new monks sometimes. I saw it happen to one new monk in the group I ordained with. A few days after ordination I saw him running and yelling that the senior monks were trying to kill his family.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is not unheard of for these problems to occur with this sort of long meditation retreat, but it is rare. The beginner's mind is not used to spending so much time in this state, and it can lead to hallucinations or extreme discomfort. That's why most sanghas and retreats require people to build up to these longer retreats.

Those who have mental disorders, whether under treatment or not, should go slowly with meditation and should keep a journal and keep in contact with a counselor. There are psychologists just about everywhere who have mindfulness and even Buddhist training, and who can help to guide people through this safely. There are enough benefits to meditation that it is worth working with a counselor to ensure that it is done safely. Those with certain forms of psychosis should probably avoid meditation, as it can alter brain patterns in a way that sidesteps the coping mechanisms one has been taught.

Long retreats are unnecessary for reaping the benefits of meditation or mindfulness. Think of these long retreats like marathons. They are incredible experiences for those willing to put in the hard work to train for them, but most people get all of the health benefits they need from 30 minutes worth of exercise. I have not yet gotten to the point of doing a long retreat in my own practice, but I am working up to it. Fifteen minutes a day and a little dedication will do it. Never bite off more than you can chew.

Also, note that if you are having a traumatic experience or suicidal ideation -- no matter the cause or when it occurs -- stop what you are doing and please immediately seek help. Meditation can turn up things that are difficult for some people to cope with. There is nothing wrong with getting a little help to deal with these things.

</comment><comment><USER11> All of the similar Buddhist retreats I have looked in to (though I've never attended) required interviews before even a 3 day retreat, never-mind 10, and generally wouldn't allow you to do a long one before having done a short one.\

You can read many similar stories about retreat experiences which are less extreme. It's just irresponsible to put yourself through that extreme or let someone put themselves through it without proper preparation. Especially if they have a history of problems.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been meditating for approximately two decades, and I think it was clear to me from the beginning, more or less, that abnegation of the self was absolutely a possible pitfall: to be either conscientiously approached, carefully avoided, or embraced and thereby ultimately ameliorated. I haven't had much success with any of the three, and it's something I still struggle with.

I try to make this clear to people when I talk about meditation (which I don't, often) - it's a sword, not a shield, and you can definitely misuse it. But for people who feel lost and powerless, it is sometimes worth the danger.

</comment><comment><USER13> This sounds a lot like vipasana meditation center. I've been to one in Nepal, and the police didn't have to escort me out of it, I did it myself on the 3rd day.

It was all fine, I didn't mind meditating, but evertyhing else was too much like prison for my taste. One thing that just didn't sit right with me was that,it was supposed to be a silent retreat but the only people you are not supposed to talk to were the other guests. The staff was definitelly talking to you and expected answers. Also things like, this afternoon I feel like skipping one hour of mediation and taking a nap were not allowed.

Later reading about these meditation centers and Sri Goenka, I found out that he developed his system in prisons and the prison like made sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER14> Being a Buddhist born person living in a mostly Buddhist country this saddens me. It seems all this hype with so called Buddhist retreats and meditation apps in the western world is pretty much twisting the teachings of Buddha. Monks have practiced meditation for centuries without any adverse effects as mentioned in the article. It seems like they focus on _state of being mindful_ than really being mindful. Meditation is not that difficult. And certainly does not require an app or a spiritual guide. Try learning a little about Buddhism and read up on meditation.(maybe avoid the best sellers and go for something written by a real monk?)

<comment><USER15> In the west, Buddhism is often stripped of the low intensity, community oriented aspects of Buddhism present in Buddhist countries; and what remains of them is invested with alien majesty.

For example, when Japanese Zen is practiced in the west, bowing to Buddha and one another is an integral part of the practice. It is something that many western people struggle with, as it connotes considerable deference in the west. In Japan, however, people bow in many professional contexts, at the beginning of class, and in many non-institutional social contexts as well. The bowing in a temple setting is a continuation of this. It's a little more regimented -- in a temple setting, we are to bow to everyone as we pass them -- but not such an enormous departure from everyday life. One the one hand, bowing in the west is something that has an exaggerated significance, relative to what it has in Japan; on the other, bowing is something where we see a continuity between Buddhism and everyday life in Japan, but not in the west.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> He mentions that he did a bunch of drugs back in the day, and that the diet at the retreat was likely to cause weight loss. This made me wonder if part of what he experienced was drugs stored within his fat cells re-entering his body.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned already, but one thing I've found mentioned again and again in various meditation forums as an aid for people struggling with difficult feelings brought up by meditation is "metta" meditation, which translates roughly to "loving-kindness". Through one way or another (often repeated mantras are used), the meditation aims to generate feelings of love and goodwill towards both the meditator and towards others. This compassion can then be called on if difficult feelings arise (and my understanding is they often do at some point).

My understanding is that insight meditation practices in particular, like Vipassana mentioned in the article, are especially likely to bring up difficult feelings. But if one has some sort of "safe container" they can put those feelings within, then they have the opportunity to integrate the experience, and they can grow from that. It's much like being able to recount a traumatic experience in a setting where you feel safe and listened to; it can allow for real healing. But there _needs_ to be some safe context for the pain to be felt. I feel like I read a lot of stories about people trying to dig up as much "insight" as they can, but without giving thought to how they might be able to integrate them (both with meditation and also psychedelics).

For anyone interested in this stuff, I've found Radical Self Acceptance by Tara Brach to be a really great source of both guided metta meditations as well as discussions about balancing "Seeing"/"Insight" and having the safe emotional container for experiences. I would also highly recommend The Mind Illuminated, mentioned elsewhere in this thread, as a great general textbook on meditation, which also gives special attention to uncovering Insight in a way that can be safely integrated.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's an 8-fold way. [http://www.zenguide.com/principles/eight_fold_path.cfm](http://www.zenguide.com/principles/eight_fold_path.cfm)

"It avoids the extreme of self-torture that weakens one's intellect and the extreme of self-indulgence that retards spiritual progress."

Hard to sit on a 2-legged chair.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm a 25 year practising western Buddhist. My perspective on this is it can be a danger to take just one part of the noble eight-fold path to such an extreme completely separated from the rest of the path. One should focus first on the base of path, get that in order and reinforce it through repeated practice. By that I mean (mundane) right view, (mundane) right intention, right speech, right action and right livelihood. They should be the majority of your focus at least. Not the higher level work of right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration (the meditative practices). That would be like trying to build the top on a pyramid before building the bottom, or trying to row your boat across the river without unhitching it from the bank.

</comment><comment><USER20> Understanding the difference between nihilism and oneness is what is required to detach from ego in a productive way. To paraphrase Alan Watts, enlightenment is like space travel, it requires enormous, longstanding discipline to go all the way out and come back intact.

</comment><comment><USER21> This phenomenon is in sweden termed meditational psychosis (meditationspsykos), and is not connected to meditation that is especially intense or extensive. Having happened to people without drug backgrounds or mental problems, some tried meditation only once. The only common denominator is meditation, in any form really.

</comment><comment><USER22> > I didn't want to stay medicated (my previous stint had lasted a decade), and > I understood that the rules of the retreat meant that as I had left before > the end, I could not go back. Vipassanā makes it clear in its literature > regarding "serious mental disorders" that: "Our capacity as a non- > professional volunteer organisation makes it impossible to properly care for > people with these backgrounds."

I don't really see what the author's personal troubles have to do with specifically _Buddhism_. If you stop taking powerful psychiatric medications and freak out in a greek monastery on the the Athos peninsula, you're also likely to get hauled away in handcuffs.

I'm no mental health expert but it seems risky to stop taking your meds, cold turkey, and likely against the advice of your mental health professional, proceed to immerse yourself 24x7 in any sort of religious retreat.

<comment><USER23> Look at this paragraph a couple above the one you quoted:

> In the mid-Nineties, in my mid-twenties when I was working as a journalist > in London, I took enough recreational drugs to keep me awake for nine days, > at the end of which I was psychotic, sectioned, sedated and held in hospital > for four months. That might sound dramatic, but I did it to myself and for > all I know the treatment (including drugs since withdrawn from use) and the > incarceration saved my life.

So, mid-90s, freaked out on recreational drugs, ended up in the hospital for four months.

Went on legal brain-altering drugs for a decade. Which would have him going off of them somewhere in the 00s.

...and then if you look at the paragraph right above the one you quoted...

> It seemed clear to me that if I could reach such an altered state through > intoxication and insomnia once, and then do it again 20 years later through > silence and concentration [...]

...we can pencil in about a decade of being _off_ the legal brain-altering chemicals. Whatever triggered this, it wasn't the result of going cold turkey off of something he'd been taking up to the last day before starting the meditation course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Funny thing, Hindus warned of this in multiple tracts in their own flowery ancient language, so it is apparently not unknown. Their solution was to stress out the role of their experienced guru to guide it and carefully mete this out.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've shared a bunch of Willoughby Britton's talks here in the past, mostly from the Buddhist Geeks podcast/conference. They're super interesting, I'd recommend checking them out.

<comment><USER12> Do you have any links? I browsed your submission history but it's fairly lengthy.

<comment><USER25> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=alex3917%20willoughby&sort=byP...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=alex3917%20willoughby&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sounds like psychedelic drugs, used properly (unlike the author), are a safer alternative. Who'd have thought?

<comment><USER24> They're not, which is why the experimenters always had an experienced "sitter" watching and there was emphasis on (mind) "set and setting".

Or why in other cultures such a psychedelic trip was guided by a shaman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> [joke]

A more advanced student would be taken away with just ONE hand cuffed.

[/joke]

</comment><comment><USER28> I found the article a little disorganized and the author seems to be having trouble expounding a clear thesis. I just read it for the second time, and I still don't have a good grasp of what he experienced or what connections he's trying to make to Buddhism. Maybe that's understandable given what happened to him (though I'm not really sure of, besides him going "crazy"), but I still think that as a journalist he should be able to write a more cohesive and lucid article. And for reference, I'm saying this as someone who's gone through a number of ineffable experiences with heavy doses of psychedelics. Just saying that he felt like he was dying and being reborn ad infinitum doesn't really cut it as phenomenological explanation.

<comment><USER29> > I found the article a little disorganized and the author seems to be having > trouble expounding a clear thesis.

How many psychotic episodes have you had in your life?

Perhaps it is amazing that the author could even put _words to paper_ to describe the experience. Yes, the piece is a bit rambling, but how often do you get a first-hand account of a visit to the Dark Night and back again?

The notion that meditation is not a universally "good" thing, that it might unlock parts of your mind that you might not want to (or be able to) deal with, is certainly worthy of exploration.

<comment><USER30> The MCTB book - [https://www.mctb.org](https://www.mctb.org)

And the Dharma Overground wiki and forum [https://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma- wiki/-/wik...](https://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma- wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB)

I'm quite surprised that the article didn't link to it as a support and enthusiast resource for hardcore meditators (even though he mentions it)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The fee based retreat this poor guy went to reminds me of the fee based authentic native sweat lodge performances done in Sedona Arizona where people die and the lodge medicine man later proves to be some guy that has no connection to any native nation.

People can have profound insights and yes also freak outs based on intense meditation. That's normally considered a success, and is something that a legitimate monastery or retreat is equipped to handle without calling police to arrest the meditator by force and imprisoning him in a psychiatric detention facility, to have the paper trail from that frame and follow him for the rest of his life.

</comment><comment><USER32> I now live about 5 minutes from where the Vietnamese monk burned himself alive and drive past it all the time [1]. It is now a very busy intersection with probably hundreds of thousands of people passing by daily, there is a temple on the corner. I'd say that the majority of people passing by have no idea what happened here in the past.

[1] [https://goo.gl/maps/A1BeFPr9nuA2](https://goo.gl/maps/A1BeFPr9nuA2)

</comment><comment><USER33> > my previous stint [taking mind altering anti-psychotic drugs] had lasted a > decade

Very interesting how much the author focuses on this one weekend retreat of sitting around, and not on his admitted long term use of experimental mind altering antipsychotic drugs.

This sounds like commonly reported withdrawal symptoms (aka freaking the fuck out) from long term use of very very powerful poorly understood drugs.

<comment><USER34> > This sounds like commonly reported withdrawal symptoms (aka freaking the > fuck out) from long term use of very very powerful poorly understood drugs.

Withdrawal symptoms do not last decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> How[0] many[1] times[3] is this going to be posted here?

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18798910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18798910)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18792327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18792327)

3\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18789188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18789188)

<comment><AUTHOR> FYI, the repost was recommended by HN itself, which they occasionally do.</comment></comment>


The importance of co-founder due diligence - <AUTHOR> http://chrisjamieson.me/the-importance-of-co-founder-due-diligence <comment><USER2> All very good points... but one additional thing to add: what is his/her reputation with former co-workers / companies that s/he has worked with?

I had one co-founder who (we thought) had a very celebrated career at a very large (e.g. publicly traded) eCommerce-based company, making his way up to Sr. Director, etc. Considering we were starting similar type of company, it seemed like a perfect fit to bring him in as our chief executive.

However, we never asked for contacts / references with people he had worked with, VPs he worked under, etc.

When it came time to raising an institutional round, we were in due diligence with a VC that _did_ look up those references, and it wasn't pretty. Turned out he had gotten fired by the company because he was using insider knowledge to basically try and start a competing company. Through his time there, he lost the trust of most of his co-workers and alienated everyone around him.

As our VC had then told us -- our CEO was a poison pill. _Any_ VC we would talk to in the valley would have connections at this company, and would definitely follow up with their contacts at the company to find out more about our CEO, and every VC will come up with the same conclusion, that he is not to be trusted.

Had we known about all of this at the beginning (including how detrimental his relationships and his reputation has become), we would've never co-founded with him.

Definitely a tough lesson learned.

<comment> UK-AL Except most references are complete BS anyway. Normally good references are agreed upon before leave, regardless to if they were good employees or not.

Bad references are normally given because of political reasons(as good references are almost always given) not performance. I.E Employee exposed bad practices or made boss look bad, and a bad reference is used as retaliation.

I think there was some academic research that said references are the worst predictors for performance.

<comment><USER3> This is the problem we're trying to fix with my startup socialcheck.me. We're trying to make a safe environment to give full picture comprehensive reference feedback by ensuring privacy and anonymity after verifying relationships are real via social networks. Then we make the data easy to analyze and compare. But admittedly, it's been difficult to figure out even then how to get people to trust that we keep the feedback private and anonymous the way kids trust Snapchat to really delete messages. Good reference checks are hard and broken (which is why we're trying to fix them).

<comment> UK-AL Doesn't fix the problem of references being used for politcal retaliation, rather than actual performance. Which what the large chunk of bad references are about. In-fact it increases it, because the employee can no longer sue for retaliation, so the manager can make up anything he wants. Managers using references to retaliate against employees is fairly common.

This is why people are scared to whistle-blow. And businesses who value integrity miss out on good employees.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, we try to compensate for that by increasing the data volume to balance out outlier feedback and identify whether something is a trend or not. But it's not easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm working for a startup where the primary founder did not perform enough due diligence on his co-founder and the results have been disastrous.

The co-founder constantly brags about his employment history at major tech companies in the area. Only later did we all learn that: 1) His roles weren't as important or high-ranking as he claims and 2) He was fired for non- performance from his last two positions. Both of those points are becoming big thorns in our fundraising as investors want to speak with both founders' former bosses.

This co-founder did work hard for a brief period when the company was started and managed to produce some good initial funding. But when the funding hit our bank, he became a victim of his own success and spent more time empire building than working on the company. Within months of our initial funding he was already working his way into adviser positions with local startups and spending our marketing budget on having a PR firm get puff-piece articles about him into major publications. I think he's spent less than a thousand dollars on customer acquisition and advertising for our product.

He rarely comes in to the office any more, and when he does he can often be found watching ESPN or Hulu in the conference room. He some times doesn't even bother to stop watching his sports games on his laptop with his headphones over one ear while he's supposed to be leading team meetings. It's depressing for the entire office, and we're losing people left and right over it.

The takeaway here is that a bad co-founder can easily sink your business. A bad co-founder isn't immediately obvious. In this case, the person in question is charismatic and persistent when necessary, and has a great ability to sell himself to others in the short term as long as you don't dig too deep in to his spotty past. This was great for securing our early angel funding and dumb money, but once the company tried to secure real funding from the big league VC firms the professional investors saw right through his BS.

<comment><USER5> Can I ask why you're sticking around? How can a company like this succeed?

<comment><USER4> I'm actively looking for and applying at other companies. Most of my coworkers are looking for new jobs.

We've all stayed this long because we have fun working here. We're building a good product and we like working with each other and the primary founder.

Up until recently the co-founder has mostly been dead weight. He positioned himself as the money guy, and his early attempts at fundraising worked, so we put up with all of his bad behavior as long as we got a paycheck and were able to work on the things we loved.

Now that the money is running low and his attempts at fundraising are failing, we're all ready to abandon ship. The only hope left for this company would be if a generous (or dumb?) investor would invest in us for the product and then replace the bad apple co-founder with someone who could actually get the job done. That seems unlikely to me though.

<comment><USER6> What is your domain of expertise? Hit me up (email in the profile) if you're interested in working with Python and/or JS (Angular mainly).

<comment><USER7> @cdman Just a heads up - you're email isn't in your profile

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Pay close attention — true motivations are revealed, not declared." ~ Naval Ravikant [http://venturehacks.com/articles/pick- cofounder](http://venturehacks.com/articles/pick-cofounder)

tl;dr: either go with someone you know and launch something together. if strangers: brainstorm, hack something together in 48 hours and thoroughly go through their background. if they've done a startup before, ask them to walk you through PG's 18 mistakes and identify which they've made (and their plan for doing things differently).

it's actually a two-sided problem. how do technical and non-technical co- founders who are potentially strangers and often have wildly different skill sets evaluate each other?

i asked a few hacker-founder friends for their take. one (well-known) serial CTO said: "I don't have negotiation skills and I'm afraid of talking to business people. They play this "wordsmithing" game and I can't keep up. Before I know it, they talk me into accepting less than I deserve and I get screwed."

turns out, being taken advantage of was a common theme among the technical founders i talked to. most have been burned. in some cases it turned them off forming partnerships altogether.

what about the other side? i was a non-technical founder when i launched my first startup, which failed partly due my inability to judge a good from a bad developer. i eventually realized that being non-technical put me in a foolishly helpless position so i did two things: 1\. i taught myself to code (i started with Pygames, moved to Project Euler and wound up working on small Python projects and learning ObjectiveC); 2\. i got lucky when i met a developer at a hackathon last year. we became friends and i asked for his help interviewing technical co-founders. he wound up being interested in the problem i was trying to solve and contributed to the project. when i wound down that startup and told him about my next one, he wanted to get involved.

 _but not before suggesting i quickly hack together an MVP, get some initial user feedback and even land a few potential customers first._ :> i'm so glad i did and he was smart to ask for this. he now understands how i approach problems, saw my ability to hack something quick and dirty, and witnessed some serious hustle as i did all of that in 48 hours. the point is we have some shared history now and the net result is trust. we also understand each other's strengths and weaknesses and talk about them openly.

(note: i also did a post-mortem on my previous startup and identified which of PG's 18 mistakes i'd made. it was a great exercise and i recommend it to anyone who has had to wind down a startup before launching their next. do it for yourself but share it with prospective co-founders and team mates.)

<comment><USER9> I used hackathons as a good type of way to network with other developers, see how we work under pressure etc. I think it works initially but start-ups aren't quick and dirty solutions. It'll be time that can dissolve a start-up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Small companies are much more like families than like work projects. There is a lot to be said for this. I would be a bit careful about engineering to stressful a situation at first, often with much less stress you can get hints at what the response will be and test those. Full on stress can bring out things you don't expect so you need a good backup.

At a former job we hired a person I knew from a former company into a job that was too stressful for them and it brought out some addiction issues the employee felt they had conquered. Turns out not so much. It was challenging but we got the employee help and back into a stable situation, but it was not the experience we had expected or planned for.

</comment><comment><USER11> Values matter. Ethics matter. If you're considering someone as a co-founder that believes the end justifies the means, or it is better to ask forgiveness than permission, then pass on that person and keep looking.

Personal anecdote: I wasted years of my life trying to get my multi- millionaire co-founder to be honest, but to his way of thinking there was no value in being honest all the time, so he wasn't. Consequently, because of the social isolation and loss of business contacts that comes from being untrustworthy (and just making bad decisions in general) this person went from have nearly 12 million dollars in the bank to having less than $500.

Karma is a bitch.

</comment><comment><USER12> Having the author's face peeking out at me from the bottom of the screen is creeping me out a little bit.

<comment><USER13> Hey! Author here - it is a bit creepy, I suppose! Sorry about that. I might need to tweak the theme :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> People need to realize most things in business are a "numbers game".

A funnel.

You try 10 companies, 2 work etc.

You have 10 co-founders, each time you learn something.

Don't understate the value of luck and randomness. Even Bill Gates realizes he was just plain lucky as much as he was smart, had the tech, timing etc.

The more you try the more you can take advantage of randomness.

IE if you don;t play you can't win.

<comment><USER15> And if you do your homework you don't need to even start _some_ of the failed companies. By check the references and ask the right questions you can avoid _some_ of the failures before they even happen.

Of course you must try, but don't spend 18 months trying something that three days of research would have shown to be doomed from the start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't possibly agree with this premise more strongly. Having the right co- founder chemistry is as critical (if not more critical?) than having the right chemistry in your personal relationships (there's a reason it's called FounderDating ;) )

I haven't been around that long, but I'd say a majority of business failures I've learned about (outside the Silicon Valley bubble) happened because of disputes and frustrations between partners.

I know a lot of people, and there are probably no more than 3 that I would ever start a business with.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have been very lucky with my business partners so far ; some of them I have never seen in person and yet have started successful business with them. So far (around 20 companies) I have not been wrong about my gut feeling I got when first talking to someone wether this would or would not work well. Unfortunately at a few occasions I ignored that feeling because it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss and I paid dearly for it. But that's only money so who cares. My biggest success has been with someone I knew I wouldn't be compatible with at all but he was so well connected and financially gifted that it didn't matter.

It is how I still start my businesses; I talk to someone briefly and if we seem to have align for the particular business in question, we just start. Personally I think people worry too much in general; there is no way to plan these things. You can be plainly stupid about it but if your intuition is that bad maybe you don't want to run a business anyway as you will have to be able to vet partners, employees, investors etc very quickly all the time after starting.

</comment><comment><USER9> In my last start-up, I was the sole Founder and had a Partner which dealt with the development side (instead of a 'Technical Co-Founder') so even though I could do it myself I prefer building the organisation. This time around we are Co-Founders but one is more 'Technical' by way of formal education. With my last one, we have been together for several years. There was a bit of a stressful period last year which they could have easily cut me off but instead shrugged and went "Look, don't worry, if you have any further projects just let us know". That was several years after our first partnership agreement. With the current one, I called this person out, working on multiple other projects and felt like mine was being delegated down to "Unimportant" (although could have been communicated better). In terms of potential development loss not a big deal, won't be a start-up killer, but nonetheless a pain for me. I am willing to 'train' up this Co-Founder though and get them into a start-up state of mind as to not burn any bridges. I think that with Co-Founders you have to work on making things go smoothly, and it's the soft skills like: \- Communication (Founder agreements, meetings etc) \- Figuring out how to work as a team (ie who is doing what etc) \- Expectations. I think that some people have a concept as to what it's like being a Co-Founder based on what they read on blog entries, on popular culture and so on and then when they actually do take on board this type of position at a start-up they get that big wake up call. I think that is where fall outs happen especially for first-time entrepreneurs. Some people may also realise that they would rather work for a company or for a start-up rather than run one, and that's OK. Some people may not handle the stress and again, that's OK.

I think it's important that, in the end, we all treat each other like human beings. We're not saving lives here - we're not surgeons, nurses, firefighters. Keep that in perspective.

<comment><USER9> Also out of this experience, my other benchmark should I look for a new/another Co-Founder is whether or not they've had experience in start-ups, and I don't mean 'I published an app and a one pager website' but ACTUAL start-ups ie they have hired, done media/press/publicity, done partnerships, done funding, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you can build it (ie if you're a techy), stop looking for a co-founder. I've seen early stage startup's team shatter due to co-founder breakups, including mine. I saw my first 4 startup die, because I either couldn't stand my co-founders or we just didn't have complementary skills.

Don't force getting a co-founder. Instead, LEARN TO CROWDSOURCE YOUR TEAM. Have as many 'advisors' as you can in as many areas as you can. They are your 'team'. They don't do the work for you, but they guide you. Hire the rest or do it yourself.

With a team, you risk having constant fights and eventually breakups. It HURTS. Your startup can't afford it. Solo, you face an attrition war, as it takes you more time to build it. Its survival of the toughest, and if you have what it takes to survive, you will make it.

I base this on the fact that I've been solo founder and bootstrapping Beepl ([http://beeplapp.com/](http://beeplapp.com/)) for the past 7 months. I don't have to deal with other people's drama. I face my own depression and that's something that I can solve easily.

</comment><comment><USER19> Emotional intellegence is a critical skill. Be clinical and ruthless in you culling of potential co- founders in this regard.

Do not make allowances for bad emotional behavior or lack of ability to reason properly, no matter how much you currently respect or like the person. The stress will make magnify every seemingly small issue 100 times. Try to imagine what the traits you observe early will be like under that kind if pressure.

</comment><comment><USER20> A friend said: cofounders are the biggest driver before getting funded and the biggest obstacle after.

<comment><USER21> If your co-founder is not as equally a driver before and after an arbitrary business event such as a fundraising round, you picked the wrong co-founder.</comment></comment>


Reverse engineering 23andMe's proprietary insertions and deletions - <AUTHOR> http://www.enlis.com/blog/2015/10/29/reverse-engineering-23andmes-proprietary-insertions-and-deletions/ <comment><AUTHOR> Many ask about a comparison of our software to Promethease/SNPedia:

"To examine further, I randomly selected 50 of the indels that we identified and looked for them in SNPedia. SNPedia only had information on 2 out of the 50 indels tested."</comment>


Ask HN: A programming language with the best community? - <AUTHOR> Is it a bad idea to choose programming language based on the friendliness of its community? Among the mainstream general purpose languages which one would you consider the most friendly and professional?<p>I've been using Go for about 5 years now. And although contribution to the Go Project (when it comes to interaction with Google employees) was the best experience I've ever had in open-source, interaction with the broader community feels like diving into a cesspit full of feces. Is it stupid to stop using the language just because of that? <comment><USER2> That's an interesting question. Actually, from a mental wellbeing standpoint I can see the merits of a avoiding a language / platform if the community around it seems unpleasant / abrasive.

FWIW I think the TypeScript community is one of the best out there. I came for the language, I was delighted by the people <3

</comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely. The dominant tone varies from community to commuity. The end result is that some communities are more helpful to new members than others; some are more collaborative and into sharing or open source than others. You'll find more showboating and chest-beating in some communities than others. Some simply have higher levels of participation and interaction in IRC and mailing lists than others.

Obviously, if a technology isn't a good fit for your project, you shouldn't use it anyway just because of its community. But if you're choosing between technologies that are both appropriate for a given project (say, Rails vs. Django for a CRUD web app), community can and should be a major factor - especially if you're new to the technology.

</comment><comment><USER4> >Is it stupid to stop using the language just because of that?

Yes.

You will find every kind of people in every community.

<comment><USER5> This might be true, but some communities are more attractive than others. There is a big difference for example between communities created around things that require an effort to reach for and those that people use because it is their job, a way to get a job or (worse) are required from them in school.

Discarding a tool just because you don't like some of its users is childish, but there is nothing wrong with looking for community that you enjoy.</comment></comment>


On Dropbox, the USB stick metaphor, & security - <AUTHOR> http://www.teabuzzed.com/2010/03/on-dropbox-the-usb-stick-metaphor-security/

<comment><USER2> This blog post is not considering the USB metaphor in context of Dropbox.

You wouldn't install Dropbox on someone else's computer just to get a couple of files. You would go online log into your Dropbox and get them from there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point.

It's just that Dropbox becomes a little like Mozy then. The whole charm of Dropbox for me is interacting natively with the file system instead of having to log into a website and click around..

<comment><USER2> sure, I understand what you mean. But surely no one would really install and sync a 50GB Dropbox on someone else's computer?

The web front end allows you to have the best of both worlds.</comment></comment></comment>