More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/01/01/258670211/more-than-300-sharks-in-australia-are-now-on-twitter

<comment><USER2> This is a very cool!

I wish something slightly similar could be done to eliminate road kill.

One idea I've thought of to eliminate roadkill/keep them in the woods is to have some type of high pitched sonar attached to the outside of your car. You turn it on and or it activates itself based on location. Animals would hear it coming from a quarter mile away and run in it's opposite direction.

HA that's probably not the greatest solution, but road kill is costly and unpleasant. It would be neat to see someone come up with a good solution!

<comment><USER3> We have them in Australia...

Shoo Roo! [http://www.shuroo.com](http://www.shuroo.com)

<comment><USER4> These should be in rental cars. I think I've never seen as many dead animals next to the road as in West Australia. Glad I didn't hit one in 4 weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Internet of Things that bite you.

</comment><comment><USER6> Would rather see a rss feed that could be used in an app, with details of the shark locations. But I guess you would have the problem of some yahoo tracking down the shark and killing it, although it is a protected species.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm a little surprised it's not GPS-based, with prices on GPS modules these days easily below $20. Make it powered by water movement and you can have receivers nearby to pick up the signals, so that you can see exactly which sharks are where, how fast they're moving, their depth, etc. The signals just have to be strong enough to be receivable when the shark is reasonably near, any since any that are farther away are of less concern. Even better if they show them on a big screen at the beach.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder about the predictability of this. There are 100s of millions of sharks out there. (Maybe more?) How much can the location of 300 predict? Is it that sharks travel in packs, so where there is one, there is many?

To the extent that this moves us away from viewing sharks as monsters, it will be useful.

We kill 100s of thousands of them (maybe even millions?) for every one of us that they get, despite their natural advantage in water. Killing them is a shame.

</comment><comment><USER9> I read the article looking for one thing. Them mentioning the potential for false sense of security. I was very pleased and Happy they mentioned it. As it was my first thought. After reading what they were doing. I may have overlooked it but did they mention any estimates about how many sharks there are in that area? Even if a wild guess? To reflect are there only 300 of 10,000 sharks tagged or 100,000?

<comment><USER10> A sense of security from shark attacks is probably not false, given the unlikelihood of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is cute, but it kind of falls under the "Let's do this thing we've done, but with new social media technology!" category rather than something genuinely useful.

 _Not_ being attacked by a shark is a real-time scenario... A shark that is 0.75 miles away could easily be 0.5 miles away by the time you've checked your phone, got off your towel, and tip-toed into the water.

I'm not dismissing the program by making it keep promises that it hasn't made...it just highlights how technology needs to be a _strategy_...to have these signals out in a public API is very cool, but for it to serve its ostensible safety purpose, the beaches need to be equipped with a public- announcement system that keys off of that data (whether it be a Twitter feed or whatever the scientists were using before).

<comment><USER12> 100% agree, a solar powered siren connected to the GSM phone network in the middle of the beach you'd think would be more useful.

<comment><USER13> No no no. No Siren, they must play the Jaws theme!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice step forward. This really needs to be all around Australia not just Western Australia. With the majority of the population on the East coast, something like it or even an app like California has "Shark Net" would be super.

</comment><comment><USER15> I swam at the pictured beach - Gracetown beach in WA - only two days ago. Fortunately there were no sharks that day, although it does have the highest shark death rate of any beach in the country.

</comment><comment><USER16> #tastysurfers

<comment><USER17> [https://twitter.com/TheAverageShark](https://twitter.com/TheAverageShark)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just think of the opportunities for marketing promos with the next "Sharknado" movie!

</comment><comment><USER19> If they had lasers or Fonz jumping over them, that would be impressive.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's about 300 Shark Fin Soups with a really easy hunt.</comment>


There Is No Impending Bird Apocalypse - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/bird-apocalypse-exaggeration-of-the-research.html <comment><USER2> This is a note to akvadrako on something unrelated.

I noticed this post of your's at:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18540757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18540757)

Since you had no contact information specified on your profile I decided to respond here. Contact me, from the information on my profile.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article is not so much about the actual published paper as it is about what should be the right way to frame the narrative. Should the conclusions of the paper be seen as apocalyptic, dramatic, or simply serious.</comment>


Indian security crackdown extended from Blackberry to Google and Skype - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5it_73CxzMozqkSOODLh2r7aCIlLwD9HVV8CO1

<comment><USER2> Now how do they plan to prevent people from simply using PGP e-mail? This is complete nonsense.</comment>


Why climatologists used the tree-ring data 'trick' - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/why_climatologists_used_the_tr.php <comment><USER3> I have spent some hundreds of hours listening to arguments for global warming, er Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change or AGW or ACC (or whatever the PC acronym is this week)

The problem that I keep getting back to is best phrased like this: _archaeological climate record extrapolation is nowhere near as sure-fire as supporters make it out to be._ I have many more problems, but this one addresses the current article.

I understand these are honest, hard-working scientists, and they know a heckuva lot more than I do about their particular area, but as an intelligent person I can make fairly informed guesses based on the standards of proof required and the types of phrases being used. There a lot of "it appears" and "it seems" in there, phrases that mean that while consensus has been achieved (we'll take that as a given for this comment) it's nowhere near a slam-dunk. There's also quite a bit of ad-hominem character assassination going on, even in this piece. I find that folks who have to result to labeling and name- calling usually are insecure about their position.

Especially troubling is the way the current divergence is addressed. The argument looks to me like "we can use this data as a proxy for all periods except those where we have direct measurements to verify correlation" I find that weak at best.

To me, the layman, tree-ring data is going to show you how well a certain tree grew in a certain place over time. That might or might not have implications for the larger area or the entire planet. Like so many other pieces of this argument, it depends on having a control group and repeatable experiments -- none of which are doable. So it boils down to speculation. Speculation by great, intelligent people, perhaps, but speculation nonetheless.

I know some folks will say "no matter what the proof you're never going to believe" I don't know how to respond to that, except to point out that I've always been more interested in the character of the debate around GW and the political implications of letting scientific consensus drive public policy more than I have the actual facts on the ground. I have no more emotion invested in whether the planet is cooling or warming than I do variations of the gravitational constant around the time of the big bang. Whichever way the facts lead will not change my underlying concern. So I really don't have a dog in this fight as far as the science goes, at least not to the degree that some others do.

<comment><USER4> >The problem is....archaelogical climage record extrapolation is nowhere as sure fire....

Then pray provide us with some _science_ supporting your point.

If you cannot, when you just keep bleating you are "troubled" over and over, you really look like someone just pushing an agenda without any support whatsoever.

And oh, what's needed now is a "slam-dunk" on the issue. A "slam-dunk", of course, was never needed when any of the corporate interests (who are the ones really astroturfing and dissembling on this issue) set out to basically rape ecosystems for their stockholders. Do you also call for "slam-dunks" from these corporate interests, or just when it's convenient for your political ideology?

This whole discussion is reminiscent of the tobacco industries continual two- faced insistence on "slam-dunks" when it came to any encroachment on their ability to reap profit from suffering.

>I have no more emotion invested in whether the planet is cooling or warming than I do variations of the gravitational constant around the time of the big bang. Whichever way the facts lead will not change my underlying concern. So I really don't have a dog in this fight as far as the science goes, at least not to the degree that some others do.

Right. And in your disinterestedness you personally posted three anti-warming editorials to Hacker News over the last three weeks. Not three science articles - three editorials espousing a single view.

<comment><USER5> Paranoia and ad hominem don't do your argument much good.

<comment><USER4> Oh. Asking for someone to actually back up their emotional little assertions with facts, and pointing out the hypocrisy of the obvious axe-grinding which accompanies their fervent assertions that they are unbiased is...."paranoia and ad hominem".

And your response was to add nothing except labeling "paranoia", right? Was that before or after you mentioned "ad hominem". Or did you, like him, have any actual science to cite here to support his assertions?

Your projection doesn't do your argument much good. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection>

<comment><USER5> _emotional little assertions_

The irony of your use of this phrase eludes you, evidently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is how science is supposed to work. Sure there are a few straw men/ad hominem attacks peppered in the article but the proper response to criticism isn't calling the other side "denialists" and feigning offense but to respond with data and counter arguments.

The problem that many of these scientists have themselves compounded is the shroud of secrecy they've put over their "normalized" and "value added" data and methodologies. Painting Armageddon like scenarios and then obstructing freedom of information act requests when people ask about how they came about their conclusions is at best bizarre. Meanwhile we have a myriad of rationalizations from their defenders that we should instead trust their peer review which at the very least, the CRU/UEA emails show are suspect at least in this field.

Instead we are bombarded by these scientists/politicians who are anything but impartial who seem to present us with a binary choice that either we radically change our way of life which has serious risks in making us and the rest of the world significantly economically poorer or armageddon... and then they're surprised at the resistance? (This also ignores the myriad of policy responses like carbon trading being mired in corruption and leakages that are being advocated by these very same people)

It would seem to me that there are two parts to the problem - <USER2> understanding conclusively what has been happening and what will happen and second deciding what the appropriate policy response will be. Personally, I think AGW is likely but I also think that we are on the cusp of a massive transition towards clean burning (and more importantly, cheap) natural gas and alternative energies which makes at least the emissions as generated by much of the Western world moot.

<comment><USER7> It still doesn't give a scientific reason why it is okay to truncate the tree ring temperature graph at 1960 and paste the real thermometer temperature graphs on top of them, except for the fact that it makes one hell of a picture. That's the "hiding the decline" that most people are concerned about. This article completely dances around that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was going to comment that this borders on ad hominem:

> FoxNews.com tells us that we finally have a 'smoking gun'--proof that > scientists are manufacturing a global warming crisis so that they can… they > can…

You know, calling out political theater instead of acknowledging that reasonable people are concerned when they see scientific misconduct. I was going to explain that this sort of Fox News reference is not so good for the discussion - let the points stand, noting that one critic of yours is abrasive does not make the criticisms invalid.

But, then I came upon this a little lower, which is a bit less subtle about it:

> It's interesting stuff ... not interesting in the way that the rabid anti- > science fuckhead (pardon me!) reality-denying luddite denialsphere types are > saying, though.

Why might the science be wrong? Because it's moved from science to an identity issue. Us vs. them. This guy isn't helping.

<comment><USER9> "Why might the science be wrong? Because it's moved from science to an identity issue. Us vs. them. This guy isn't helping."

This is exactly why I choose to avoid the whole global warming climate debate thing. It is so hard to find any sort of unbiased information because everyone who talks about it has an agenda and forces it in your face. An Inconvenient Truth was actually gag worthy, an hour and fifteen minutes of Al Gore masturbating his ego over his crusade, five minutes of ridiculous cartoons, and maybe fifteen minutes of actual statistics. Obviously a station like Fox News or a talking head like Sean Hannity is going to push a right wing viewpoint to the death, so there is really no point bringing them up in any serious debate about basically anything. Even this posting, I just have a hard time taking this particular blog seriously given the "Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal", as the description, whether it is intended to be humorous or not.

The whole global warming debate is not as clear cut (if you can call it that) as something like stem cell research where the issue was basically science vs morality/religion. Both sides have their own statistics, both sides try their hardest to refute the other sides' science, and even the people who actually agree with each other that there is global warming often have different opinions on what can actually be done (if anything) to fix the problem. When something like the climate-gate situation becomes public, it makes it even harder to actually take any of the science seriously, because one can only assume that the studies, experiments, and modeling is being done with the intention of proving one side right or wrong, which will undoubtedly lead to all sorts of unintended cognitive bias.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting and important to read the comments below that article. What this shows is that seeing a smoking gun in the "nature trick" email alone is misplaced, but also that the interpretation of what's going on with those tree rings is not nearly as clear or uncontroversial as the global warming alarmists want us to believe.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've read through the article, and what it all says to me is that there are more questions on answers, and a lot of speculation as to the divergence problem. While there are some sound suggestions as to why, it would seem to me that these are all enough to discount tree rings as a useful proxy until they are better understood. To me, the use of statistical methods to blend out the divergence from a specific date seems like a real fudge.

</comment><comment><USER12> Watching Hacker News argue about climate change is like watching the blind argue about colors. Please stop. In general you have no idea what you are talking about.

Again and again and again and again there are comments along the lines of, "I did five minutes of Googling about this issue and I've come up with a fatal flaw in climate science!" Do you _really_ think that the tens of thousands of scientists who do their life's work in this area are all fucking idiots? Every last one of them? You are _late to the party_. How greenhouse gases work has been thoroughly explored. The science of _whether_ we'll get a substantial human-caused climate change from increasing the amount of atmospheric CO2 by 35% is done. It's over. The science now is in determining/predicting just how much it will be, and in predicting the effects.

Every thread about climate science on Hacker News is one giant facepalm. Every thread. Please stop.

<comment><USER13> Your comment has even less evidence or analysis than the comments you're complaining about. It's just an angry assertion.

It's ok for people to who are not experts in a subject to explore it. If you feel they're on the wrong track, help them by giving them information.

<comment><USER14> There's an over-abundance of information. All that's left for HN is angry, emotional quibbling by those who lack the basic qualifications to evaluate the data and science, even if they were interested in actually doing so.

<comment><USER15> The comments I've read so far present interesting POV's backed up by data and observations. I don't see how that qualifies as "angry emotional quibbling".

I don't see the problem with discussing science either. Newton's law of gravitation has been around fot 322 years, and it has been shown to be just a very good approximation (like everything else in science). Also, it is still an open question (AFAIK) whether it holds at very small distances. Climate research is not physics. The number of variables and the complexity of the system is of such magnitude that I am pretty sure there will plenty of room for scientific discussion for years and years to come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If anything, I would expect the relatively recent divergence of correlation between tree-ring measurements and other climate measurements to _bolster_ claims of an unstable climate, rather than suggest cooling.

Here we have a situation where plant behavior closely follows other measurements of the climate for a very long time, and then recently ... they don't. The most likely explanation here -- still being studied, mind you -- is that there has been a significant change in the interaction between trees and environment in certain areas.

<comment><USER17> Which "other measurements of the climate" are you referring to exactly? CO2 level is not a measurement of climate, of course. It seems to be correlated, but it's unknown if its phase is leading or lagging. So, what measurements are you referring to?

<comment><USER16> > _CO2 level is not a measurement of climate, of course._

LOL.

Well, that's it. I'm done. Have a nice weekend, folks.

<comment><USER17> If you honestly think that CO2 is the one and only cause of climate, ignoring solar cycles, and other effects, and furthermore, if you believe with certainty, that the CO2 cycle is phase shifted ahead in time, compared to temperature, when it's just as likely that it's lagging, than you're right, we really have no point in talking.

Also based on your response, I think we now know what "other climate measurements" you were referring to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Because otherwise people would have realized much earlier that their tree-ring data is not a useful proxy for temperature?

<comment> bjelkeman-again Do you have a good peer-reviewed article that shows that tree-ring data as a proxy for temperature is a poor fit. I'd be interested in reading it.

<comment><USER17> I don't have one. That's sort of the problem, though, isn't it?

With the climatologists interfering so strongly in the way this is supposed to work, by selecting which peers do their reviews, and by applying political pressure to the journals, the whole "look it up in the established body of work" approach has been sabotaged.

EDIT: I forgot an important one. The collusion aspect that the emails revealed. We're not going to put this result in our paper, even though we believe it, because it messes up Scientist B's premise.

<comment><USER16> You're kidding, right?

Evidence of absence is not proof. Imagine if this argument were used in other contexts: "there are no papers published in peer-reviewed journals about intelligent design. This proves that there's a conspiracy in the biological community!"

In fact: there are a few published papers which challenge popular climatological measurements and papers, and they are cited as often as possible by ... I don't want to call them denialists, but I'm not sure what else to call them.

So, wrong on both counts.

<comment><USER17> Reread my post. I didn't say that the absence of papers proved anything. I said that the scientific process has been sabotaged in this instance, making things more unclear than they should be.

You are slick though!

EDIT: Perhaps you're honestly confused. I'm a bit doubtful on that, but in case you are. We know that the process has been sabotaged. Not because there are no papers, but because many of the details of the sabotage were revealed in the ClimateGate emails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone a little disturbed about that website? From the title "Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal".

On the sidebar: "The Rise of Atheism, Global Atheist Convention".

This guy is some type of Atheist cult member.

<comment><USER20> > "Atheist cult" That's quite an oxymoron don't you think?

<comment><USER21> Not at all. Atheism is without God or gods. This is not the same as without religion.

As an example some Buddhist sects are both atheistic and cults.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If AGW is a vast scientific left-wing conspiracy, I think it's diabolically brilliant. Surely everyone thinks reducing pollution and fossil fuel dependency is important, right?

<comment><USER18> _How_ important? Look at the arguments of Bjørn Lomborg, "The Skeptical Environmentalist". He says e.g. there are far better ways to spend the world's money to improve lives than e.g. what's being proposed WRT to AGW/CC.

<comment><USER22> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005924>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> FTA: _The main cause seems to be increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide._

Call me when you're sure. Extraordinary calls to action require extraordinary proof.

</comment><comment><USER24> Another thing worth remembering in this context is that once people get used to lying with a straight face it is a hell of a job to stop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. But at least that's more discouraged in scientific circles than in think tanks and PR/astroturfing campaigns financed by those who want to discredit science for financial gain.

<comment><USER6> And you don't think that the billions of dollars at stake in carbon trading don't result in proponents attempting to discredit critics?

<comment><USER16> The current views in climatology were developed long before there were "billions at stake".

Meanwhile, if there are "billions at stake" in the "green" industry, there are trillions at stake in those industries that would like to not have to install complicated and expensive filters for their manufacturing exhaust, and for the automotive industry which would surely love not to have to meet quite so stringent air quality standards.

Can we at least agree that arguing about monetary motivation is problematic at best, and probably stupid, and stick to the actual science here?

<comment><USER6> Sure (though the millions at stake in academic research particularly given the political climate as the leaked emails illustrate are also of significance) - but let's first separate the conversation to understanding that (1) what's the problem and (2) what we should do about it are two separate issues.

Let's also understand that much of the western world like the US are about to show significant declines in carbon emissions irrespective of what Fox news or any other polemics - pro or con say. (ref: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/15/us- decline...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/15/us-decline- carbon-emissions))

<comment><USER18> By my count of an enumeration in _The Wall Street Journal_ (in an OPED) there's currently well over 5 billion in academic "research" at stake annually. Paul Jones, the top dog in the CRUtape Letters, himself pulled in 22 million in the period in question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love HN. Everyone here is an expert on anything.

<comment><USER26> Does one need to be an expert to follow the argument and form an opinion about it? If that was the case then why don't we let the experts make decisions, not just provide information.</comment></comment>


Signs of price truce push Lyft, Uber higher - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lyft-results-research/signs-of-price-truce-push-lyft-uber-higher-idUSKCN1UY1HM <comment><AUTHOR> Now that established players like the taxi companies have been driven out and a duopoly has taken hold, the remaining behemoths can practice price collusion.

To paraphrase Leona Helmsley: Marketplace competition is for the little people.

The tech industry loves "free markets", not because of their theoretical benefit in fostering innovation, but because undefended marketplaces are vulnerable to network-effects hacking. Winning through great technology is hard, so what flourishes as a business model? Rent seeking.</comment>


Appmator - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pndpgaogppgnfdnagodccjlhfjgdefij

<comment><AUTHOR> From Paul Kinlan: <http://github.com/paulkinlan>

Do you have a Web app? Do you want to get it into the Chrome Web Store? Not sure exactly where to start?

If you can answer "Yes" to any of these questions, then this app is for you.

By entering your app url, Appmator will examine your web app and create a basic manifest that you can upload into the store with in 30 seconds.

It is really as simple as that.

Features: \- One click process \- 30 seconds to get your app in the Chrome Web Store \- Examines your site to get: \- Title of your app \- Description of your app \- Icons to use on your site \- Creates the zip file automatically for you to upload in seconds \- Allows you to configure your app immediately</comment>


Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job? - <AUTHOR> I am curious to know how long were you working on your side project until it was successful enough to become your full time job. <comment><USER2> I'm probably near the higher end of the distribution to this among my Internet buddies: about 4 years. Partly this was due to it truly being a hobby, partly because bingo cards are not the most renumerative thing in the world, and partly because my skill level at the time was rather low.

A more typical number among my SaaS buddies is about 18 months of sustained effort until you hit $10k in MRR, which typically is enough (after expenses) to keep a solo founder in the field indefinitely.

The fastest I've ever seen it done is about ~6 weeks for SaaS. Even shorter for infoproducts, although depending on the dynamics of the business that might be "launch one, get relatively flush with money, buy yourself enough time to launch a second one" until you figure out some not-too-obvious things about how to sell them repeatedly.

A consultant, naturally, can hit day job equivalent levels of revenue virtually immediately after hanging out their shingle (if they've got a client lined up). A fairly common pattern is "Inform day job of intention to quit; immediately go back to working for day job as 1099 during transitionary period; start building pipeline while delivering for Client #1."

<comment><USER3> Patrick, do you intend to continue doing side projects with you new role at Stripe?

Best of luck at this new role :)

<comment><USER2> I'm going to keep writing/speaking, but probably not launch any new for-money style projects. Partly this is out of respect for the day job's wishes, partly this is out of desire to maintain free hours for spending with my young family.

<comment><USER3> Great. Glad to hear you'll still be writing. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 28 months a mean of 2~3h per day. Now It's my full time job and 3rd Start-up. The most time consuming part until now, finding good partners, product definition, market research.

So far so good, but it confirms me that Europe is slower for firing up a project.

<comment><USER5> Can you elaborate on the Europe is slower part?

<comment><USER4> Sure !

There is not a big entrepreneurship culture in general (at least in Spain & Southern France) so starting a startup, learning through others experience, next steps etc.. It's harder.

Also the social pressure is a big reason why entrepreneurship is hard. While in USA, failing and starting over is seen as something natural, in the various Spanish and French communities I have lived is seen as a disaster. Even more in some places is seen as an intent of showing everyone that you are smarter than them so you create your own product/service in stead of working in making better the existing ones. I think it's a cultural thing.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for this. It really didn't occur to me (as an American) that starting a startup somewhere else could be more difficult, but thinking about it more and trying to think of each of the steps required to even launch an MVP, I realize that these things have been made easy for Americans because of those startups who came before us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If side project == freelancing, i just had my first (and only) month $1k. This was though Upwork. I negotiated hard and got 75% more than the initial offer. It felt more like negotiating a commodity (my day-job) than a specific skill set. I won't knock Upwork too much though, as I got my first freelancing gig through them without much effort.

<comment><AUTHOR> Freelancing is not a side project, it is actually a job.

<comment><USER3> Sure. But it felt effing good :)

To clarify: it was a project outside of my 9-5, which made it feel side- projecty. It was also something that was paid on a contract basis which made it 'somehat official'.

I negotiated almost 2.5 months to get this contract, which also made it feel real.

I may not be answering your question, but I'm sharing this so that others know that this is a possibility and also because I wanted to. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I started to freelancing in a similar way a year ago, but I still keep my side project :) Actually it is a good way to have time for your side project

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://officesnapshots.com](https://officesnapshots.com) here -- I'd say it was 5 years of being a hobby before I decided to try to make it into my full- time job. Was a history teacher when I started the site.

Another 2 years or so of temping, miscellaneous web work, and anything else to pay the bills.

It has now been 2 years where the website is truly my full-time work and I'm looking to hire my first employee in the next few months. Pretty excited about that!

<comment><USER7> What's your business model like for Office Snapshots?

<comment><USER6> Primarily advertising based. I'd say that it resembles a magazine most.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Probably unusual, but about 10 weeks. It was a niche market paid iPad app, written and deployed in 6 weeks, and we saw immediate sales so we left off iOS contracting and began working on it full time.

That was a little more than 6 years ago and it has continued to be our full- time project. However we did add versions on most other platforms and a cloud sync service, and I'm not sure that we would've continued to generate good revenue without those additions.

<comment><USER9> What's the app?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 18 months until I reached $4k in MRR. It wasn't enough to pay the bills, but I had a couple of years of runway.

I ended up not using my savings as the business started to grow 1k/month after I quit my job.

<comment><USER3> What was the project?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 9 months, started interfering with day job, quit, worked out the notice month. That was 5 years ago :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> 4 years. It was successful, but my previous job was pretty good also.

I eventually switched getting paid for my side project because, it was open source, better management, and I got paid better. And I love doing it.

</comment><comment><USER13> For me, about a year. I'm doing cloud design & deployment. Nervous because I know these contracts will not last forever. That, and I _am_ the business. If something happens to me, I go from good money to $0 in no time flat. I got the work solely by word of mouth, and I'm not sure how to sell, to get more work.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a problem where I get distracted way too much and now have several side projects at 50% completion. And now looking at them, I wonder why anyone would pay money for them. So...I guess the answer is infinity.

</comment><comment><USER14> It took me 9 months. In two weeks I'm quoting a day job. I hit $2k MRR (after expenses) and finished contracting. I'm planning to use the runaway money from contracting at the beginning.

For me, the worst thing is siting at the office, doing job for someone else and not being able to care about my project and customers. Doing it full time is a huge relief.

</comment><comment> clark-kent Back in 2006 I was making apps for SecondLife virtual world, it took six months to make the first $1000 in sales, then 3 months later it had grown to $5000/month so i quit my day job as a tech support rep. I did it for 4 years, now i'm back to consulting mostly because sales took a nose dive around 2009.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been working on my side project since the back end of 2014. I've had at least a couple of 3-4 month breaks from it during that time.

It's only just getting close to something that I can share with people, so I won't be working on it full time in the near future (if ever).

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not there yet. For me 'side project' is more a way of living, than a one- time effort to quit a day job. Even if my side project becomes main occupation some day, I'll come up with another side project to learn new things.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't really believe in deciding whether to go full time based on how long you've been working on a side project, but rather based on its traction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Obviously it is not. You can read my question as how long did it take you to get enough traction in your side project to became a full time job. And still the answer will vary depend on how much do you spend in your side project, the market, your goals, etc. I hope no one decides to go full time with their pet projects because of the time they have spent on them!

<comment><USER7> Perhaps the post has changed but this is the title I see: "Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?"

Adjusting it would definitely helps clarify if that's not what you meant. Perhaps, "How successful was your side project before you went full time?", or "How much MRR / traction... ?"

<comment><AUTHOR> What I wanted to know it is the time. Any metric I ask about a project is not going to be good. MRR -> it depends on your expenses and if it is a peak of a trend or something constant; active users -> depends if you are building the next facebook or a Saas business; etc... Any metric is deep linked with the project and doesn't say anything by itself without a good understanding of the project and the market. I just wanted to know the time because I was curious about it, but you cannot claim any conclusions based on a single metric and without a deep knowledge of the business.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is producing so hard? - <AUTHOR> I have been trying to write a blog post, create a side project or involve in some open source projects since the beginning of the new year but it's not materializing.
Most of the time I end up consuming - reading an article on HN or just installing the open source project on my laptop or watching a youtube video. Since consuming is so easy, it is very difficult to break the habits from consuming to producing.
I want to know how others manage to produce so much outside of their 40 hours job on a consistent basis. What is the recipe to write the first blog post or hack a side project ?
Please share you thoughts and hacks. <comment><USER2> Turn off the internet.

I usually start out by creating an offline reference material dump (offline docs - zeal, offline stackoverflow - kiwix, ebooks, pdfs etc) so I have no great excuse to get online. Then I setup a schedule in my router to block all internet traffic for N hours.

For me getting work done also depends on the environment I am in. If its a problem that I am making progress with, then I can sit alone for hours and work on it. But if its not going well, I need to be around others who are all looking busy and productive :) That has some weird effect on me to stay focused.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the recent link on HN ([https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/04/has- dopam...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/04/has-dopamine-got- us-hooked-on-tech-facebook-apps-addiction)) gives us a clue. Consuming gives us instant gratification in the form of a dopamine hit. Whilst producing unreliably gives us a hit only once we complete a significant chunk.

I have been aware of this dynamic for a long time and by recognising that we develop an addiction to dopamine we can take the sorts of steps that are applied to weaning off any addiction. There are numerous articles on the interwebs on different processes. You might need to experiment to find the one that works well for you.

The other thing that I do is to "chunk it down", i.e. pick one small, manageable piece of a task. One that takes me no more than 90 minutes and do that. Once completed I do an affirmation and take some time out. Then tackle another chunk.

If you have trouble concentrating for 60-90 minutes then I would suggest embodying some of the strategies in "Deep Work" by Cal Newport.

I find that making a short (3-5 item) ToDo list each evening for the next day helps too.

Finally, it is best to recognise that there are many interlocking pieces to making these changes, and it takes time. And don't beat yourself up when you drop the ball. Take some time out and muck in again.

I no longer have any social media apps on my phone or notebook, only on the desktop and check them at most once a day, sometimes not for several days. I leave my phone on silent and only return emails once or twice a day. But HN -- that is the one "luxury" that I browse for a few minutes between chunks.

</comment><comment><USER4> Play around. Make things. Try things. Sit down with a rough plan and a few hours and see what ends up slowing you down, then surpass it.</comment>


Five charged with felonies for tweeting or retweeting a cop's photo - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/five-charged-with-felonies-for-tweeting-or-retweeting-a-cops-photo/ <comment><USER2> > Update (~4pm ET): Mid-afternoon on Friday, August 7, the Essex County > Prosecutor's Office dropped its cyber harassment charges against all five > defendants, the Asbury Park Press reports. These charges stemmed from an > incident involving a Tweet attempting to identify a New Jersey police > officer. Our original story on the situation appears unchanged below.

Sometimes a little publicity is all the defense you need.

</comment><comment><USER3> "If anyone knows who this bitch is throw his info under this tweet." \- it's not just "tweeting a cop's photo"

<comment><USER2> True, it's not just a photo; it's also a request to identify a police officer, which has legitimate purposes.

Unless you think that calling a police officer a bitch is a felony.

<comment><USER4> Worded as such it does appear threatening. If someone tweeted that about me I would feel worried about my personal safety and that of my family. The law specifically states that placing a reasonable person in fear for their safety via online communications is a crime.

If you're going to request personal information for a legitimate reason then you should word it in a non threatening manner.

<comment><USER5> IRL, cops behave far more threateningly than calling someone a "bitch" on Twitter, and yet they don't get charged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope they get good lawyers and tell the prosecutors to pound sand. What a sick joke.

<comment><USER7> Yes and can they sue for this too? Not sure how it works but this does sound it is like creating unfair stress for people to have to now defend themselves because they retweeted something or expressed an opinion on twitter.

<comment><USER8> Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, in most of the jurisdictions harassment is a crime and its for the courts to decide.

<comment><USER7> Thats the question. Is this harassment? Is the retweet harassment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should afraid of their people"

[https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/nypd-backs-down-from-bust- of-c...](https://nypost.com/2020/08/07/nypd-backs-down-from-bust-of-cop- assault-suspect-sources/)

</comment><comment><USER10> The behavior of these cops is deplorable.</comment>


Quotient Types for Programmers - <AUTHOR> https://www.hedonisticlearning.com/posts/quotient-types-for-programmers.html <comment><USER2> Nice explanation of quotient types. How do they get used in 'application' programming though?

<comment><USER3> The discussion at [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23596225/how-can- quotien...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23596225/how-can-quotient- types-help-safely-expose-module-internals) might be relevant. I haven't taken the time to understand it, though, so no guarantees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone used the OBJ language family he mentioned at the end as supporting this? It sounds fascinatingly different.</comment>


Auditor's response to "Our security auditor is an idiot" (Update 3) - <AUTHOR> http://serverfault.com/q/293217 <comment><USER3> If this is real, I'll be stunned if the auditor keeps his job.

Then again, after working at startups my whole career, maybe I'm just naive about how messed up the real world is.

<comment><USER4> Customers of a particular gigantic consulting company have to be routinely dissuaded from "passwords _similar_ to _any_ old passwords should not be allowed", which is often in bid documents. To a man, when told the requirement is unsound, they suggest infinite retention of passwords in plaintext plus Levenstein distance and ask the consultancy why their engineers couldn't come up with that obvious solution themselves.

The reason for this requirement to repeatedly pop up in bid documents is misapplication of a poorly drafted standard by people who are theoretically experts at enforcing it's normative intent.

I would love to throw in an additional anecdote here, but it would violate a confidence. Pretend that $500k had been allocated to produce a list of plain text passwords and a combination of bureaucratic inertia, competence issues, and internal politics made that requirement an unstoppable freight train. That gives you the flavor of it.

<comment><USER5> Lots of security standards require passwords to have at least one digit. Lots of security standards require passwords to be changed every so often.

The end result? A user starts with the password "Seekrit1" when they join the company, then the next month they change to "Seekrit2", "Seekrit3", and so on.

This is hardly what the security policy intended, so stopping that happening isn't actually a bad idea.

Obviously storing a complete password history in plaintext (which would even have to be online for the consultants' plan to work) is ridiculous, but pre- calculating a bunch of hashes of similar passwords every time a new password is set would certainly be feasible.

Changing passwords is usually a rare occurrence, but making this at least slightly computationally-expensive shouldn't be a problem. Of course, the more expensive the password-hashing algorithm, the fewer "similar" passwords you would reasonably be able to pre-calculate, which is an odd trade-off to have to make a call on.

One thing to be wary of, though: by pre-calculating and storing a bunch of hashes of similar strings, this opens you up to (what might be called) a related plaintext attack. I have no idea if existing password hashes are specifically designed to be resistant to this, but would guess not. (edit: I didn't think this sentence through correctly. Thanks, Joachim)

<comment><USER6> > Lots of security standards require passwords to be changed every so often.

Which is almost as idiotic as storing a complete password history in plaintext, because it pretty much guarantees that passwords either (as you note) follow a simple pattern, or if that is made impossible, are written down in an easily accessible place.

<comment><USER7> A very convenient place to store and retrieve them is under a "passwords" folder in your private mail account or your Dropbox, both of which get synchronized with your unprotected smartphone...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When "I have been in this industry longer than anyone on that site" is a cornerstone of your defence, you've already lost. Also, I know the UK has really strict laws, but I doubt he'd be able to sue for "liable".

<comment><USER9> It's a flat lie as well.

He doesn't know, and can't know, everyone commenting to HN. At best hes fabricating. I was going to top post that but checked first to see if anyone had surfaced that line.

The auditor is an idiot and feels cornered.

Also: "I'm going to assume you do not have PCI installed on your servers".

PCI is an auditing standard. Not something "you have installed on your servers".

And I guess I'm getting too far ahead of myself, because the OP comments on this in his serverfault posting.

Classic! "PCI SSC have responded and are investigating him and the company. "

I'd say samarudge did a bang-on job here.

<comment><USER10> He should have explained that the servers don't have any more PCI slots available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't help but feel there is some kind of social experiment going on here.

I mean I know there are a lot of incompetent people out there, but a security auditor asking for a list of plaintext passwords is not something that should take more than an email or two to resolve even in Bizarro world. "Techies" exhibiting this kind of willful ignorance are usually a bit better and hiding under their rock.

<comment><USER12> I take it you've never worked with someone who was truly incompetent. Often such people have some sort of defense mechanism that allows them to cover up their incompetence with some degree of effectiveness. But sometimes it shines right through, and then you end up gobsmacked that it's even possible for someone to be that ignorant/illogical.

But it does happen, I've seen it too many times.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but such people can not remain the lynchpin of a PCI auditing operation. I mean how many WTFs from anyone who has half a clue have to be sent to the brass at this company and the ones they are auditing on behalf of before someone thinks "holy shit our entire reputation and business is being flushed down the toiler on a daily basis?"

It just doesn't pass the smell test for me. I don't know what it is, but something is missing from this story.

<comment><USER12> Maybe not forever, but long enough to cause pain in your life? Sure. Perhaps the company was bought or created by someone with too much money and not much domain expertise and then they gave their incompetent relative a position without much oversight. Wouldn't be the first or last time that happened.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but if your payment gateway is going to shut you off based on this nonsense you call them up and explain the situation to them and then they investigate. There are too many parties involved for this kind of willful ignorance to be the last word.

I dunno, maybe it's true, but for me the story still isn't adding up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The auditor was actually serious. Wow. I really thought he just wanted to check the reaction of the admin, to see if he'd actually hand over sensitive stuff.

<comment><USER14> The auditor has a hugely inflated ego, something that might be a sign you're dealing with a narcissist. It's a pretty huge claim to make that you've "been in the industry longer" than anyone else, but that's the sort of thing you'd say when you're that kind of person.

Everything they said is surely made up, and if you challenge them on their facts, they'll attack you in return.

<comment><USER15> Yup. Sounds like a fairly classic case of workplace sociopathy -- the sociopath who gets promoted because they tell lies and bully the folks below them into obedience. ( _Not_ the kind of -- much rarer -- sociopath who is violent or robs banks, but still a royal pain in the ass to run across in a business context because any attempt you make to deal with them technically will result in manipulative social retaliation rather than "oh, my bad".)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Please tell me this is a troll. I mean, I've seen some pretty incompetent people doing jobs they're not cut out for before, but I really want to believe this level of incompetence can't actually find jobs.

<comment><USER17> Some people excel.... on well... giving good interviews.

Back then, I used to believe that people know what they are doing, but since I've lived long enough know, maybe not.

You gotta be careful, people like that will come to personality attack when push come to shove. When facts are against them, it is now time to yell.

<comment><USER18> "Some people excel.... on well... giving good interviews."

The sort of interview that this guy would do well in is a poorly-conducted one. A simple question like "what does it mean to hash a password and why would one do that?" or "what is PCI?" would expose his incompetence.

<comment><USER19> Your assuming that the person interviewing him knew what the answer was supposed to be. It sounds like the incompetence goes all the way up and he was probably hired by a businessman who had no idea what PCI even is, much less the details of proper security.

<comment><USER18> Right. But we're both making the point that "gives a good interview" is contingent on "isn't given a good interview."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's interesting is that the PCI standard seems to be unclear in this respect. He quotes from the standard:

      8.4 Render all passwords unreadable during transmission
      and storage on all system components using strong
      cryptography.

This seems to leave room for passwords to be encrypted instead of hashed. I'd even say it suggests they should be encrypted instead of hashed, by not distinguishing between 'during transmission' and 'during storage'.

At the very least, quoting this isn't going to convince someone that passwords should not be decryptable.

<comment><USER21> It's not unclear, and you're right. It has to be encrypted on the wire and in storage. This paragraph does _not_ say you must hash, or must not be able to get the plaintext passwords back.

<comment><USER22> That may be, but even if PCI doesn't require you to have the passwords unrecoverable, I'm pretty sure that transferring all of them in bulk to someone else via email should violate some part of PCI. Even if that person is an auditor. The potential for abuse is too high.

<comment><USER23> Actually, hashed password ARE recoverable, technically. Though it would take a VERY long time to brute force the original passwords.

<comment><USER20> In theory, there are infinitely many passwords that map to the same hash, so not all passwords are recoverable. In practice most passwords will be recoverable (given enough computing power), because there will only be a single 'reasonable' match (you will probably find only one for passwords of reasonable length).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From the perspective portrayed in this article, the auditor seems misinformed about fundamentals in his industry and his response to being called on this seemed superficial and borderline childish.

It must be difficult to be ridiculed in a public form of your own profession. Not to mention being called stupid and ignorant for misunderstanding something. I hope I always have the humility to admit when I'm wrong, but also have the patience and understanding when other people don't.

</comment><comment><USER25> A colleague of mine once had to stand one foot on top of the other and chew his own lip when an SI's "security expert" introduced himself as an 'old- school CISSP' just to stop laughing out loud at him.

There are many idiots in the information security industry (I should know, I are one) - we're doing our best to get rid, but more keep showing up.

<comment><USER26> Can you explain? I have no idea what a CISSP is.

<comment><USER25> It's full name is the Certified Information Systems Security Professional. There's a good writeup of the problems with CISSP here:

[https://infosecisland.com/blogview/15450-My-Canons-on-ISC- Et...](https://infosecisland.com/blogview/15450-My-Canons-on-ISC-Ethics-Such- as-They-Are.html)

and here:

[http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2011/07/ethical-problems-of- ci...](http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2011/07/ethical-problems-of-cissp-and- isc2.html)

It's often described as 'a mile wide and an inch deep'. However, it's not really the example of broad security knowledge it sets out to be and is considered a joke certification in my niche (technical security).

<comment><USER27> Interesting. I've been considering working towards it, but if competent security professionals think it's a joke.... :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Quite a few managers and auditors really don't understand the difference between a password hash and a password.

I expect the auditor was asking for password hashes, although he was using the phrase "plaintext passwords". Who knows, but that part of the story may just be a wording misunderstanding.

Not everyone speaks geek, and it's important to know when you're talking to someone who does not ;)

Edit: Not sure why this is being down voted as it is a true statement. I've had to explain what a password hash is on several occasions. And even after that, there was still some misunderstanding/confusion.

<comment><USER29> There's still the question of why he would need the password hashes. Assuming he wanted the plaintext passwords to see if they are 'complex' and 'strong,' he would have a hard time telling that from the hashes.

5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 and 05b28d17a7b6e7024b6e5d8cc43a8bf7: Which is a dictionary word and which is a string of punctuation? (I didn't salt :))

<comment><USER30> John says the first one is "password", in under a second. I'll wait for a few hours to see if I can get the second one speedily. (By the way, this is why you shouldn't use MD5!)

<comment><USER31> md5 doesn't have anything to with it. sha256 _maybe_ takes 10% longer to compute the hash.

<comment><USER32> Which is useful if you're brute forcing, md5 is also algorithmatically broken AFAIK.

<comment><USER33> Define broken. It is possible to generate (within reasonable time) two files which have the same md5 sum, which means you shouldn't use it to sign anything somebody else have given you.

On the other hand collisions between two different files are still not something you would ever expect to see in the wild so if you are trying to find duplicated files, then you don't have to worry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "any inventive suggestions for how to troll him [the security auditor] a bit?"

Nothing productive could come of that. This situation is not for your entertainment. Just move along...

</comment><comment><USER35> the Daily WTF - live!

</comment><comment><USER36> As I live and work in Birmingham, UK, I hope this is all an elaborate hoax.

<comment><USER37> I really hope you're not a security auditor? ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I haven't been in the industry that long, but I've encountered a few "security professionals"--auditors, penetration testers, etc. All of them have been totally incompetent; they could tell you the definition of, say, a SQL injection attack but had no idea how to really analyze a system. On the other hand, all of the great programmers I've met have had a really good grasp of security. I'm starting to think that if you don't write code, you're not qualified to audit it.

</comment><comment><USER39> At first, I thought that this was a bogus post...but it seems to be real - <USER2> this guy is keeping up with the story.

</comment><comment><USER40> That security auditor could give a lot of the guys featured on The Daily WTF a good run for their money.

</comment><comment><USER41> Argument from authority. Nice try.

</comment><comment><USER42> This sounds more like social engineering to me. My first thought was this was a hacker who took control of an email address from the security firm, and just tried to exploit the weakest link in order to get plaintext passwords.

</comment><comment><USER43> Apparently, neither of these guys paid attention in high school civics class. Slander involves oral, not written, communication. Libel (not "liable") is the term for a tort involving false and damaging written communication.

</comment><comment><USER44> Incompetent people in the security field really need to be called out like this.

Incompetent developers generally only hurt the company; incompetent security professionals hurt every single customer as well.

</comment><comment><USER45> If it's in the UK they may be liable under the Data Protection Act, too.

<comment><USER46> I like the auditor's take on this:

"I see no data protection issues for these requests, data protection only applies to consumers not businesses so there should be no issues with this information."

The Data Protection Act applies to individuals within the EEA trusted circle nations, full stop. Whether or not the information being requested requires individual consent under the DPA is a different point altogether.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Dreaming of a world without passwords... Any ideas?

<comment><USER48> The problem with not having passwords is that it usually requires an authority to distribute keys (and not retain the initialization parameters for that key, _cough_ RSA _cough_ ). And that could potentially require a third party having access to information a lot of people don't want. Or trusting the government to generate them -- which opens up another can of worms.

Things like OAuth and/or federated login still rely on a password at some level.

Pick your poison (personally, I wouldn't mind using an RSA Soft Token type technology with federated access requiring token + pin, but that's just me).</comment></comment>


10 Honest Thoughts on VCs - <AUTHOR> 1. Think of investors on the bell curve. Most of them are in the middle, 25% at the bottom, and 25% at the top. You only want the top 5%. Hint: look at returns.
2. Investors look at the same decks and do the same number crunching. The ones that consistently choose the right companies have something that the other VCs do not.
3. The VCs that are good understand companies in a way that is beyond metrics. They are intuitive. You don't want a VC that is obsessing over numbers. You want a VC that sees beyond and trusts themselves enough to take risk.
4. There are great partners at VC firms, but, ultimately, they have to serve that VC firm. Make sure the culture of that VC firm is a good one. That culture will impact that partner and that partner will impact you.
5. VCs don't like to admit that they are primarily money people. The fancy offices, coffee, etc. is all about putting in small money and later getting out big money. Don't kid yourself into thinking it is more than that.
6. VCs will say anything to get into your company if it is hot. They can be like a high school kid trying to get laid. If they think they can get you, then they'll say whatever they need to say. They just want to get laid...sorry paid.
7. Being a VC is not glamorous. Most of them are unfortunately not happy. It is competitive. They compare themselves a lot. Look at the life they live. Do you want that kind of life?
8. Most VCs are not terribly insightful (see #1) and all VCs will make poor judgement calls. The best ones own up to it. The lousy ones deny their mistakes.
9. VC's control the company. Even the very smart people that have "hacked" the SV system still serve investors. You have to keep them happy. If you have to keep them happy, then you are not in control.
10. The best VCs are conflicted about VC. They know how it can crush a founder or company. This bothers them, but they deny it and keep rolling forward. <comment><USER2> Did Michael O. Church take some writing classes and become more concise and less inflammatory?

Haha kidding.

I wonder how many will get my joke. I figured since it's HN, I'd give it a shot.

<comment><USER3> I loved it. Definitely an OG reference at this point.

If you could only add in an Amy Hoy reference, then we could seriously start reminiscing about the good ol' days.

Is there a Discord, Slack channel, or something where the smart, vocal people with different opinions hang out? If so, please let me know.

<comment><USER2> I was curious so I visited his blog - he's still really angry and it's just as beautiful and fascinating as ever.

Here's a recent post that I enjoyed reading just for the sheer entertainment value - reads like a thriller: [https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/elon-musk- re...](https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/elon-musk-recently-put- tesla-customers-lives-at-risk/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Founders should treat VCs like the service providers they are and not like bosses. The only "trick" to doing this is having some amount of success before raising money.

Corporations are controlled by boards so it's not true that VCs control the company unless you sell them that right. You can refuse to ever give up power it just requires fortitude and conviction.

VCs are a temporary solution to the problem of funding technology companies. Replacements are already in play.

<comment><USER3> This is a great idea in principle, but I think it rarely works unless your company is ridiculously hot.

If you go the VC route as a company that is not the new hotness, then it will be trivially easy for the VCs to end up controlling the company (the good ones don't actually want to do this). Any veteran VC has experienced founders who want to retain control, and they know how to slowly increase the temperature until it is too late for the frog to realize that it is being boiled.

Other than being thee new hotness, the only other way to maintain autonomy is bootstrapping. Frankly, many business seeking VC would probably have a much higher EV bootstrapping since they are either not a business that can scale at VC levels and/or only have access to mediocre VCs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very honest thoughts. Did not see it this way. I aspired to become a VC once but after a long hard look at it, I'm not sure if I wanted to anymore. They destroy a lot of companies that would otherwise do well. It's no secret though, the good ones admit it.

<comment><USER3> I think the argument is more nuanced than this.

First, certainly many companies get wrecked due to crappy VCs. The crappy part is usually their poor selection of who to invest in.

Second, the companies that VCs find _must_ hit home runs for the VC model to be successful. A lot of companies could definitely be good or great companies that hit singles and/or doubles, but that won't work for the long-term success of the VC. As such, they take the single- and double-hitting companies and they'll them to swing for the fences.

These two points are related. Many (Most? All?) companies funded by mediocre VCs from the start don't have home run potential for one reason or another. The fact that VCs run these companies with base hit potential into the ground is simply a fait accompli.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the top 5% is based on returns, couldn't a major factor be that they founders are not getting a good deal?

Companies will benefit greatly from the help of a good VC, but perhaps it is more nuanced.

<comment><USER3> Screwing the founders is pretty much not a good way to maximize present or future returns for a VC.

The top VCs get great returns because they work with great teams who (usually) have great ideas, and these VCs serve as highly effective force multipliers.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good service provider for running CPU intensive algorithms - <AUTHOR>

We have an algorithm which we need to run for couple of months. This is a very CPU intensive task. You might ask what kind of algorithm it is. Let us assume that we want to index the whole internet. It's something like that.<p>Suggest me some service provider who can provide us the infrastructure to run this. IS cloud based infrastructure a good option ? <comment><USER2> Dewitt Clinton mentioned some techniques for creating something on the order of an effective web crawler (internet indexing), but I'm not sure what it's limiting factors were (cpu, memory, number of threads/bots, asynchronous bots).

here's the link: [http://www.google.com/buzz/dclinton/KuXDg9P8Q8z/Jesse- Stay-A...](http://www.google.com/buzz/dclinton/KuXDg9P8Q8z/Jesse-Stay-A-few- points-of-clarification-to-your)

check Dewitt's first comment:

DeWitt Clinton - I'm not even sure how to respond, mostly because I can't even guess how you came up with the number 3, or how you can say anyone "owns" the web.

There are currently hundreds, no, thousands, of companies, universities, and individuals have indexed large portions of the web _. Getting the basics isn't even that hard. No exaggeration, you could build a perfectly suitable crawl for a sgapi of your own in a few weeks.

The hardest bit is probably the node mapping, but fortunately, that's open source:

<http://code.google.com/p/google-sgnodemapper/>

Even high quality crawlers are available under open source licences. Nutch, for example:

<http://lucene.apache.org/nutch/>

And I highly recommend this book on the fundamentals of web crawl and indexing:

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0136072240/>

Storing the node graph can be done on any number of open source or commercial backends. If I wanted to do it myself, I'd probably host it all on EC2 at Amazon. The cost wouldn't even be prohibitive, depending on how deep and broad you want the crawl to go, and for sgapi stuff, you don't need to go that big to be useful.

_No one ever has, or ever will, indexed the whole web

<comment><AUTHOR> That was really a very useful reply messel. However in our case the crawler code etc is ready. The only thing we need is some powerful infrastructure to run it on.

We have certainly considered all the factors you have mentioned while implementing our crawler however unlike typical crawlers the objectives of our crawler is purely a research goal and completely different than what most have done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> BlueLock vCloud Express offers 4- and 8-CPU VMs in a self-service "cloud," much like EC2. The big VMs are expensive, but cheaper than buying 8x "high CPU" amazon instances. Also, memory is not tied to CPU -- you can have an 8-way VM w/ 256M of RAM, if you really want it.

[http://www.bluelock.com/bluelock-cloud-hosting/bluelock- vclo...](http://www.bluelock.com/bluelock-cloud-hosting/bluelock-vcloud- express/)</comment>


Ask HN: I have always wondered... - <AUTHOR>

The point of this thread is for you to ask HN what you have always wondered.
I'll start. I have always wondered why are there no real life chat rooms. Like, when I am bored I can go to a chat room online, and talk to complete strangers. I have always wondered why isn't there a room or area in every community where everyone can go and it is actually acceptable to speak to a random stranger and you can make friends, etc.
What have you always wondered? <comment><USER2> _I have always wondered why are there no real life chat rooms._

You have no bars/pubs/clubs in your area?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can't just go to a bar or pub or club on your own and talk to a stranger. Well you can, but thats the exception not the norm.

<comment><USER3> Most people don't, but try it anyways. You'll probably be pleasantly surprised.

Most people don't go to chat rooms online either. You shouldn't judge what is possible by paying attention to what most people do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeh but you would feel weird. Why not just have a place where it is conventionally acceptable to talk to other strangers.

Anyway, what has everyone else always wondered?

<comment><USER3> _Why not just have a place where it is conventionally acceptable to talk to other strangers._

Suppose you created this. A certain core of people would go. Before long they would know each other. After that any newcomer would find that they are in a sea of people who know each other. And given our culture, would feel awkward going up and talking to them. Even though those people are nice and actually would be welcoming.

This is a surprisingly good description of many clubs, bars, various kinds of meetups, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bars. Networking events. Niche groups (ie. Rocking Climbing group, Java User Group, etc)

This reminds me of: <http://mylifeisaverage.com/story/2282043>

<comment><AUTHOR> That was very funny. I am scared to try and find out what a blue waffle is :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.meetup.com/></comment>


Ask HN: How does server location and latency effect Google rankings? - <AUTHOR>

Hi All,
As far as I understand, if you have a ccTLD (e.g .co.uk or .com.au) Google will use this to determine your websites locale, and where your site is physically located is irrelevant. Is this right?
HOWEVER - hosting location will affect latency. How much of an impact might this have on rankings?
Thoughts, experiences much appreciated. <comment><USER2> 90% of your search rank is determined by the number of high-quality sites linking to you. The other 10% is titles, metas, keyword density, on page markup, interlinking between your pages, and finally page load time (in roughly that order). Page load time only becomes a factor after evaluating all of the other factors first. If you're going to spend time doing anything, focus on the 90%, not the last 1%.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've moved my servers all over the place, from Canada to the US and to Europe, never seen any effect on the rankings.

Yes, hosting location affects latency, but if you host in places where the latency differences are so large that you will see a change in rankings I would suggest that you find a better provider. Unless of course there are no alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok great, thanks for the feedback</comment></comment>


Ask HN: At what size do Microservices make sense? - <AUTHOR> I like the idea of Microservices, however I have yet to have a project of the size where I felt the benefits of them outweighed the drawbacks. However I am going to meetups and conferences and seeing 1 - 2 people startups start with a microservice architecture.
I am wondering if I am missing something and microservices are perhaps more suitable for smaller projects / teams that I had originally thought.
Any advice would be fantastic. <comment><USER2> Microservices are mostly an organizational tool: how do you get 500 programmers to work on one website?

Solution: one service per team, aka microservices.

(Occasionally there are technical reasons to have multiple services, e.g. one for loading data and one for processing data. But that's not really the same thing.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought managers would give up on talking about "microservices" about 2 years ago I thought they would latch onto "blockchain" and "crypto." The are still talking about "microservices" but just mean that they want each team to have their own hardware and communicate over the network. Look, this stuff is three decades old at least. When someone says "microservices" I know they are a clueless idiot manager. They can't explain what they are talking about in terms of build, deployment, versioning, networking, processes, etc. They try to enforce mistakes that explode performance. They say "monolith bad." The can't really say anything beyond that because they are faking it.

Don't like monoliths? here's a "microservice architecture" for you, Java servlet API, circa 1997. Everyone can package their micro-service into a WAR file and deploy it to a service environment. That's right, Companies were doing this shit in the 90's. It probably amazes these same people to know there were servers and computer networks in the 1980's as well. Http was not even the first popular protocol of its kind.

What I hate are these managers who pretend they know what they are talking about saying, "microservices", but they are fucking faking it every step of the way.

<comment><USER3> Oh, and to answer OP's question, no microservices are absolute shit for startups. You want all your code in the same address space so there is zero communication overhead between different parts of the code. Hosting small services all over the fucking place was only due to small hardware in the past. Today, we can get 128 core machines with multi-terabytes of RAM if it is needed. It becomes a problem of how do we deploy code independently in small units. Well, any platform that can hot swap code does just that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Visibility of benefits depends on how your engineering organization is structured. Once you have a lot of teams working with monoliths becomes very painful. Having independently deployable unit starts making more sense then. Each service owner has to expose APIs for their users and that forces them to think more about how their service is supposed to be used and what problem is it solving. This also gives autonomy to teams in developing/maintaining their services (tech choice/programming language). Services also help in isolation and QoS. For example if you have different services handling order execution and order listing, the service handling execution has to be highly available and responsive while you can be a bit lax with other one.

With services you do need to have a good monitoring system in place. Also having ability to trace a request across services is a great boon. Helps in proper communication across teams.

These are of course only some of the reasons I could think but one thing should be clear that going Microservices route involves buy-in from the engineering org and a good enough developer population (I feel ~30+ is good to start)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's a buzz word with no content. "Microservice architecture, or simply microservices, is a distinctive method of developing software systems that tries to focus on building single-function modules with well-defined interfaces and operations." That is the normal way of developing software systems.

In practice, it can mean responsive web sites that relies on AJAX end points or a collection of REST api:s. But you can never know that any two people mean the same thing when they speak about "microservices."

</comment><comment><USER6> In my opinion your perceptions are correct. Microservices aren't a cure-all to be applied indiscriminately. They're a design pattern that's useful in some contexts and less so in others.

In order to really benefit from the use of microservices your organizational structure has to be non-monolithic as well (Conway's law), i.e. ideally you'd have cross-functional teams that take end-to-end responsibility for single microservices.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you have to ask the question you don't want to do it :)</comment>


Remote Work: Hiring, recruiting, and essential tools - <AUTHOR> https://blog.garrytan.com/masterclass-on-remote-work-hiring-recruiting-and-essential-tools-part-1-of-2 <comment><USER2> I just want to share my favorite remote work pair programming tool for MacOS: Tuple

[https://tuple.app/](https://tuple.app/)

It has much better screen sharing than any of the other commonly used tools (Zoom/Slack/Skype/VNC, etc) with higher resolution, very low latency, and no distracting overlaying UI components (I can't emphasize how important this particular issue is to me).

It's essentially a reborn and upgraded version of ScreenHero (from back before Slack bought them out and then utterly destroyed what was so great about it).

I am not affiliated with Tuple in any way, but I want their product to succeed because I love it so much, so I evangelize it whenever I can!

<comment><USER3> How does it compare to the newly launched product 'Screen' (from the Screenhero founders)?

[https://screen.so/](https://screen.so/)

<comment><USER2> I think it's awesome to see the Screenhero folks back in the game, but when I tried Screen.so out, it still suffered from two of my biggest complaints:

1\. Unnecessary UI elements floating over the screen. Screen opts to have a floating box with buttons and stuff that you can drag around, but it's always floating over your screen. You can minimize it, but then you lose functionality. Tuple, on the other hand, hides their functionality in the system tray menu, and in the application's title bar. With Tuple, you can go into full screen mode and Tuple is completely invisible and the experience is seamless.

2\. Screen.so places an annoying green border around the screen when recording/sharing (they did this with Slack, too, and I hated it). The green border often obscures application scroll bars and other window elements, and is completely unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > One thing that we're really big on is, wherever we can, we'll engage in a > paid trial, or a paid test of some kind. For engineers, this is rather > straightforward. We'll basically just ask what their desired hourly or day > rate is, and we'll put them on a modular project for them to work on. That > kind of doesn't require being highly integrated with the rest of the team.

This is great for the company. But for the candidate, I'm not convinced.

If I'm a W2 employee, I don't have any interest in complicating my tax return for a couple of days trial contract. Realistically, how much more are you going to learn about me in that time frame over a 1-2 hour technical interview.

Some plan on a longer trial contract - I see alot of 3-6 month contract-to- hire situations. This still isn't good enough because in startups the candidate will miss out on stock vesting. In large companies the candidate will be 'other'... there is a clear divide between FTE's and contractors at most large corps/there is a risk that the project might change/role availability will change.

If a company is serious about hiring employees. I'm convinced w2 from the start is the best.

It sends the message - we trust you, you belong, you're a part of our team. There can definitely be a probationary period, and there should be a more stringent hiring process. To me this is about signaling. If a company isn't willing to hire full time I think one of the following: 1. You don't have enough funding to do this right. 2. You don't know how to properly interview people. or 3. You think this is being generous but in reality don't fully understand the implications.

Remote work is about trust. If you don't trust someone - you don't have any business hiring them. Even in the current covid situation I'm seeing people hesitant to hire remotely. It's crazy. It's so much easier to slack off in an office than in a properly setup remote team.

Contractors are great for remote as well. But set clear expectations - straddling between contractor and employee is counter productive.

<comment><USER5> Also probably tailored to US law?

Here in Germany you're usually not allowed to do any paid work without notifying your current employer, or at all.

Also not even sure how it would work for currently-not-employed people, you can't just write a bill for 2 days of work without a company.

And this is just additional to any tax problems.

That said, I think I like the idea a lot more than sitting through interviews. But it's simply not feasible (here) unless you're a freelancer already and just do this as a short paid gig before starting there. (Because then you should be prepared for such a gig, anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Had a lot of fun doing this. Thanks to Garry and Katelin for the opportunity. Happy to answer any questions. AMA.

<comment><USER7> As YC alumni and founder with experience working remotely — and given it appears likely, per YC, that the YC S20 summer batch will be 100% remote — would it be possible provide any suggestions for working remotely with YC as part of a YC batch?

(Already created a related "Ask HN" [1] - but please feel to reply (if you do) wherever makes sense to you.)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22750941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22750941)

<comment><USER6> Yes I'd say:

\- make use of the office hours that YC provides. You can schedule these once you've been accepted. They've already been doing office hours by video.

\- ask YC alumni for introductions to investors. The community has really pulled together to support the W20 batch that just graduated. They're the first to do demo day remotely. I know some of the companies had no trouble raising substantial rounds fully remotely.

\- one aspect of YC that works really well is meeting other founders serendipitously. I anticipate that YC will probably figure something out to enable this, but don't be afraid to reach out to relevant alums asking to connect.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing — all good advice regardless of if YC ends up doing the next batch 100% remote or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the things that people are running into is Zoom link overload. My days are back to back

One thing I don't think they included is scheduling meetings - beyond just a calendly availability.

I've been using [https://Woven.com](https://Woven.com) to coordinate work availability for the past year and it's really helped me get a handle on my time.

I think time & calendars are going to be the next tools people are really going to need as they have to do a lot more self-directed remote owkr.

<comment><USER9> I think 99% of people are just using Outlook for this (or Google Calendar, if that's how you roll). It knows everyone's availability, will notify you if someone can't make the meeting you are creating, and can automatically generate the Zoom info and add it to the invite. Then, if you want, you can link your Exchange calendar to Zoom so it just pops up a join button in a notification five minutes before (or, of course, just open the calendar event and click the link). It's very similar for Teams and webex too, if you use those ones (just need the webex plugin), and Google Calendar auto generates Hangouts Meet links if you are a GSuite group.

It's much easier to use the calendar everyone already has than to find yet another SaaS to manage. And, by default, Outlook doesn't show what you are doing if there is a conflict, just "busy", so it does allow you to add blocked periods for lunch or focused work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For the reverse, working remotely, I found:

\- Define a product instead of taking orders.

\- Don't be afraid to cut bait.

\- Work the job while quoting.

\- Clients are not equipped to provide technical direction.

Maxing out the ratings on Upwork only finds people who work towards that rating, sometimes even complete offshore teams.</comment>


Jeff Bezos' big 60 Minutes reveal: Delivery drones and private cloud - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/12/01/amazon-drones-were-not-the-biggest-surprise-from-jeff-bezos-on-60-minutes/

<comment><USER2> This isn't exactly news...

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/30/ibm_amazon_court_ko/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/30/ibm_amazon_court_ko/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well they have to say private cloud, but seriously would you host your stuff on a service that hosts the CIA? Its a government hackers wet dream.

I feel bad for amazon on this one. They wont see it coming.

<comment><USER4> I was under the impression that Amazon fought to have the servers in Amazon data centers, but eventually relented. Amazon employees will be constructing servers inside CIA facilities. Other AWS services won't be running on those servers.</comment></comment>


Income tax department sends notices to 500K HNIs involved in Bitcoin Trading - aman-pro https://inc42.com/buzz/income-tax-bitcoin-trading/ <comment><AUTHOR> HNI = "High Net Worth Individuals"

(because that's just so obvious)

<comment><USER2> The article quotes a fine of INR 10,000 (roughly $250). Interested to see how they classify "HNI", as it seems a trivial fine to avoid the hassle.</comment></comment>