Joyent drops Gab's web hosting - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1056362626077220865/photo/1 <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318788](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318788)

</comment><comment><USER3> It says right there in the truncated message from Joyent that they violated the accdptable use policy, a policy they agreed to when they created their account. I don't understand why they're surprised.

Co-location is likely a better route for someone like Gab.

<comment><USER4> It's an interesting acceptable use policy [1]. Interpreted literally, it is breathtakingly broad to the point that it is hard to imagine a useful site that does not violate it.

There are three categories of things that you are not to post, transmit, re- transmit or store on or through any of their products.

1\. Material that is "in violation of any local, state, federal or non-United States law or regulation".

2\. Material that is "threatening, obscene, indecent, defamatory or that otherwise could adversely affect any individual, group or entity".

3\. Material that "violates the rights of any person, including rights protected by copyright, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property or similar laws or regulations including, but not limited to, the installation or distribution of "pirated" or other software products that are not appropriately licensed for use by Customer".

[1] [https://www.joyent.com/about/policies/cloud-hosting- acceptab...](https://www.joyent.com/about/policies/cloud-hosting-acceptable- use-policy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The killer (Cesar, as CNN lovingly calls him, in line with their history of making sure mass murderers become immortal) also made death threats via Twitter: [https://mobile.twitter.com/RochelleRitchie/status/1055867631...](https://mobile.twitter.com/RochelleRitchie/status/1055867631461416962)

Somehow I doubt hosting providers will apply the same moral standards as they think they are doing for Gab.

<comment><USER6> that's the other guy. this article is about the pittsburgh suspect not the florida suspect or the kentucky suspect.

it's been a suspectful week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> gab apparently hosts some rather inciteful and controversial speech. Albeit I wonder if GNU social might be a better alternative?

paypal also severed ties...so as far as i can gather this just feels like shooting the messenger. Hopefully this spurs gab to invest in devops. losing your hosting provider should mean you can reload your site in a matter of minutes anywhere else with automated toolchains and CI. I wonder why it takes months?

</comment><comment><USER8> Obligatory reminder that this has nothing to do with freedom of speech; Joyent is a private company and may do business (or not) with whomever they choose.

<comment><USER5> Obligatory reminder that a private baking business may be forced to bake gay wedding cakes and the last parr of your argument is moot.

<comment><USER9> Obligatory reminder that protected class is different than free speech and political stance is not a protected class and sexual orientation is (or should be depending on where you live). Your analogy is moot.

Whether you side with the baker or the wedding couple, comparing it with this is not a valid analogy.

<comment><USER5> > political stance is not a protected class and sexual orientation is (or > should be depending on where you live)

Despite what your pink haired friends might tell you, you cannot mutually substitute "political stance" and "Christian belief", as the supreme court confirms[0].

[0] [https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/04/politics/masterpiece- colo...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/04/politics/masterpiece-colorado-gay- marriage-cake-supreme-court/index.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kivy: python UI framework. GPU accelerated, multi-input (win,osx,lin,android) - <AUTHOR>

Kivy 1.0.7. was just released. kivy is the most awesome framework (for any language) for creating stunning user interfaces with support for a wide variety of input modalities like multi-touch, object/marker/fiducial tracking, kinect/gestures. Packaging for windows (exe), osx (.app/.dmg), and android is now available for easy distribution of kivy apps. It's licensed under the LGPL, so you can use it in both open and closed source projects. Info, downloads, and extensive documentation available here: http://kivy.org/ official github repo: http://github.com/tito/kivy From the release notes: Kivy is a full featured framework for creating novel and performant user interfaces, such as multitouch applications, under the LGPL 3 license. The framework works on Windows, MacOSX, Linux and Android. iOS support is coming soon, and available to brave hackers in repos. DISCLAIMER: I am one of the kivy developers, so I am obviously biased in how awesome I think it is. That said, please check it out to see why I am so excited, before knocking me for posting such a shameless plug. <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure that LGPL3 requires that the user be able to replace the library with a modified version of the library.

Since that's not possible on Android that I know of (because of the packaging), I don't see how Android distribution can comply with the LGPL3 license?

<comment><USER3> What prevents the user repackaging the application given its source?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the lazy:

<http://kivy.org/>

<http://github.com/tito/kivy>

</comment><comment><USER5> This is cool, but to seriously use this one would have to have an idea of how extensible this is (is it easy to add new widgets? reskin existing widgets?) compared to existing UI toolkits.

Also it's entirely unclear what makes Kivy specific to NUI? I am assuming that you ditched the old one widget/one focus model and that multiple widgets can have focus at the same time. But that's not really said anywhere, it just "looks" like it from the multiple scrollbars in the demo.

So really aside from the very cool demo there is no strong evidence to convince someone to switch to Kivy if they've worked with UI toolkits before.

Maybe talk about this over the tech demo on top of having cool music.

<comment><USER6> It's perfectly fitted to make your own widget or add new one. Almost all our widgets are subclassed from another one, and we believe that the simplicity to make your own widget speed up the testing process. We even think that if you don't have a perfect widget that fit to your need, it sometimes simpler to subclass and changes or add new behavior / graphics. Check: [http://kivy.org/docs/guide/firstwidget.html#your-first- widge...](http://kivy.org/docs/guide/firstwidget.html#your-first-widget) for a complicated widget that tracing all the touches + trails

What's make Kivy specific to NUI is we have an approach that combine every possible input into one event. That's unlikely because most of times, you have event for specific device (on_mouse_down/move.., on_object_down/move..., on_touch_... ) Here, we have uniq event dispatch, and extensible motion event that deliver all the data he can deliver (position, angle, acceleration, image...). It's called profile, and a motion event can deliver information according to one or more profile. For example, the mouse will fill properties of the "pos" profile, instead of Wacom tablet that will fill "pos", "pressure", or even TUIO with fiducials object that will fill "markerid" and "angle". Then you can do specific interaction or filter specific motion event according the profiles delivered in the current touch.

All the widgets are made using that approach, make it possible multiple interactions at the same time.

Not sure if it'm 100% clear, best is to read & try :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You should just post this under main HN.

It isn't really an Ask HN sort of item, and Ask should be used for "Tell HN", as that's kinda what HN main is for.

It'll probably get you more exposure, too. I'm curious to see how the licensing works out.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, i've been looking for an open source library like this for ages. This is prettymuch exactly what we have where I work (Unlimited Realities/Fingertapps), but the engine is proprietary and based on a custom scripting language.

Having an open alternative to play around with in my own time will be awesome, thankyou!

</comment><comment><USER9> I am not sure how well LPGL works for iOS, since you need to compile it as single executable without dynamic linking to 3rd party libraries, hence need to provide the source.

Can we have LGPL with exception for iOS?

</comment><comment><USER10> Those pages load very slowly for me, but I like the idea.

It might be experiencing unusual load. Let's use a CDN instead. <http://kivy.org.nyud.net/>

<comment><USER11> Same here.

<comment><USER12> same here, maybe the tweet caused servers to be too busy

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, reddit + HN brought lots of people at once :/ hopefully back up soon (its loading, albeit very very slowly here).

github is still there for anyone wanting to check it out, the info and docs are best on the website though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I usually prefer native UI toolkits, but this looks decent framework for Android apps. well, Android default UI apis/frameworks are frustrating me. Supporting wide variety of input modalities is nice.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been looking for Android via Python. Tell me, what devices have you been using it on? What apps feature it in the market?

<comment><USER6> Search Kivy on the market: [https://market.android.com/search?q=kivy&so=1&c=apps](https://market.android.com/search?q=kivy&so=1&c=apps)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How does the Android version work? Does it bundle a Python executable?

<comment><USER6> Yes, python is compiled for arm, and shipped as a library within the apk. Java -> Python -> your .py application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> that is truly awesome.</comment>


G.V. Ramanathan - How much math do we really need? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102205451_pf.html <comment><USER2> And how much literature, and how much history, and how much music, and how much sport.

I'll never be a top flight athlete, why should I bother to exercise. I'll never perform music for others, why should I bother to learn to play. Answer: they enrich my life, they make me able to do things that I otherwise wouldn't think about, and would escape my notice entirely.

Similarly math helps me to think critically, and makes me less likely to be taken in by the blather and spin of the politicians.

If you want a populace that just accepts the "facts" and "statistics" ladelled to it, and which can be taken in repeatedly by con artists and tricksters, by all means stop once they can count. And why even both with that? Who needs to be able to count?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd agree with your thinking - beyond practical uses and the practical need for a functional democracy to have thinking citizens, knowledge enriches human life.

What was a bit surprising to me was how contrarian the author was willing to be publicly. Unless he's just messing with his colleagues and readers, and perpetuating the status quo where the minority who can use math generally make a better living than those who can't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Rather than dig into the question of whether higher-level math (like calculus) is really good for the masses or not, I think it's pretty clear that there's still plenty of room for improvement in making sure that _basic_ quantitative and critical reasoning skills are taught more broadly and substantially than they are, at present.</comment>


Zynga Raising $500 Million at $10 Billion Valuation - <AUTHOR> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20110217/zynga-raises-500-million-at-10-billion-valuation/

<comment><USER2> $10B valuation? This is unreal. On what is this valuation based other than "comps"?

How did valuation against comparables work to match reality for the real estate bubble?

<comment><USER3> Zynga has revenues in the hundreds of millions, based on "You pay us money and we pay you pixels." They have had explosive growth. Betting on that growth to continue, FB to not bleed them dry, and users to continue loving their product is a bet, but it isn't _crazy_ like saying a pet food company which loses money on every shipment would make it up in volume and hit the same valuation.

<comment><USER2> Ok, lets get serious here. $10B valuation / $250M revenue/year = 40x multiplier.

Do people really think that Zynga is going to continue to deliver for years and years to come?

<comment><USER3> A 40x multiplier for a company growing as fast as Zynga is is totally reasonable. They aren't a Fortune 500 blue chip whose growth is primarily constrained by the market and macroeconomic factors: there are still more people who have not experienced the joy of virtual cabbage farming out there.

I wouldn't sell my index funds and buy Zynga, but if Wall Street is investing in them, I think that probably isn't in the top half of dumbest things Wall Street will do this year.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure there actually are that many people that haven't discovered the joys of virtual cabbage farming that might be persuaded to do so. They claim 320 million people have tried a game, which is a staggeringly large proportion of free internet users. The amount of worldwide free time spent on Zynga is so ridiculously huge I genuinely can't see the potential for upward trends to continue (other than cornering the Chinese social game market, which will be tough). Unlike Facebook, I don't think it's fair to say they're only scratching the surface of their revenue-generating potential either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The round includes big institutional investors Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Investments_

Oh gawd, here comes Wall Street again, they ruin everything. Bubble 2.0!

<comment><USER6> I can't wait for the AAA-certified "Startup-Backed Financial Instruments" that they can sell to all the pension funds they didn't totally bankrupt the first time.

<comment><USER7> Actually easier to obscure the true value of a startup than a mortgage, might be onto something there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is zynga making more money than facebook?

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, there is no boom!!! WTF!!

</comment><comment><USER10> This is just more proof that if God actually exists he probably hates us.</comment>


Freelance as a Service - <AUTHOR> http://letsworkshop.com/freelance-as-a-service/ <comment><USER2> While posting your prices may seem like a good idea, I'd recommend not doing it in most cases. I say most cases, because I think it depends on the type of client you're going after.

In my experience, most clients that actually pay a fair amount of money are those that understand what their getting into. These clients understand that they'll be forking out $20k - $40k for a project. So, in these cases, posting prices is irrelevant. They just want the best person for the job. Your sales challenge will be elsewhere.

Now, if you're targeting the mom and pops in town and their average budget is $2k, then posting your price MIGHT help. BUT, this is simply a race to the bottom. If your rate for a project is $2k, but a competitor will do it for $1.5k, who will the budget minded client choose? Based off of the price alone, you've just scared away the client. You probably won't even get the opportunity of an in-person meeting.

Bottom line, choose your clients carefully. If they pick you because you're the cheapest, you might have bigger problems ahead of you...

<comment><USER3> Sure. But the idea is to do a quick ice breaker project that can later turn into a larger one down the road. Hence in that case a $500 - $2000 structured project makes sense, I think.

<comment><USER2> I used to work in the printing industry. I thought that if I got a small order, like a set of business cards, it would be a great way to break the ice. It almost never worked.

Businesses are in business to make money. If you can provide value (I'm not saying you can't) and they see an ROI on their money, they'll pay. They want a solution to their problem AND they want to work with someone they like and trust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a fascinating article, thank you.

When I was a freelancer the goal was always to set up small recurring tasks with a number of clients to smooth the peaks and troughs of work and bring in a regular income. These examples are a great way of showing how this idea can be marketed and scaled without having to rely so heavily on word of mouth or existing relationships - though I'm sure they do still play a part.

The change in approach from 'See what I've done for others', to 'Here's specifically what I can achieve for you' is key.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is an interesting trend. You've got great insight into this, Rob. I think ultimately, we have a sales and positioning problem in our industry, not a productization problem. Products assume our work has a set value to every client. But they don't and we artificially limit our income potential by assigning prices before understanding value.

<comment><USER6> What's the best way around this? A 3-tier pricing structure, with the 3rd being a custom amount? Customers, myself included, also hate when prices are obscured on a website and will just go away - have you seen any good solutions to this yourself?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've evaluated a lot of design portfolios in my life and it always amazes me how self-titled "User Experience" designers fail to apply the most basic UX process to their portfolios.

Stuff like defining who is the user, what are their needs, performing basic user research, establishing an information hierarchy and testing their designs against potential candidates.

It's been my experience that too many designers these days are more into the "fun stuff" of picking a color palette, creating awesome background textures, geeking out on CSS3 animations and other things that help enhance your dribbble profile at the detriment to applying themselves to the craft of design.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been considering setting up my website to be nothing but a work calendar, with empty blocks the visitor can buy. I'd have control to shut down unbought blocks if I want free time. I'd have some copy on what I do best, but essentially the customer could buy my time for anything they want, and could buy it right away.

<comment><USER3> I don't think customers want to buy YOUR time. They want to buy THEIR results for THEIR business with as less of your time as possible.

<comment><USER8> Depends on the service. Sometimes the service explicitly _is_ my time. Tutoring, for example, or job candidate interviews. I didn't mention this in my first post, but I think I would emphasize that you're explicitly buying time _with_ me, i.e. we'd be on Skype together, working through something. Pair programming for hire!

<comment><AUTHOR> The benefit is never just time it's whatever is the outcome of how you spend your time. Id read the article

<comment><USER8> You would? Go ahead then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The question I recently have asked myself was this: on these structured or productized pages, should we push the customer to a low friction gradual engagement lead generation action, or close the sale with a payment? I'm now trying out the former. Thoughts?

<comment><AUTHOR> Which option has the most valuable result to the customer? Regardless of payment, I think delivering something that is going to really blow them away upfront is going to be the best thing... And you have alot of amazing work to do that :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Rate this Start Up - SourceCow - <AUTHOR> http://www.sourcecow.com

<comment><USER2> _SourceCow answers the biggest question we've all asked ourselves- why is that person following me?_

I sort of doubt this is, in fact, the biggest question for most people. Or even most people among those on Twitter, who are a small fraction of the total population. Or even those users of Twitter who have fallen within its reality distortion field and think that their follower count means anything, since the reality distortion field suggests that the count is important rather than the individual followers.

Your startup requires that X perform an operation which is expensive in terms of time, effort, and perceived risk (installing a plugin and then commenting) _without receiving value_ so that Y can receive value. That is a virtually perfect recipe for not gaining traction.

Very nice design, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Obviously there's some marketing speeel in there but I do think in general folks wanna know why they're being followed.

I mean lets just go over to search here...

<http://search.twitter.com/search?q=why+do+people+follow+me>

There's some ammo right there to back up a concept like this. Will it save lives and make oodles, maybe not but could it fill in some blanks sure!

There's little value in lists and far more effort.

<comment><USER3> "Why do people follow" to me does not indicate the presence of a real market for a software product, but a medical product to deal with paranoid narcissistic delusions of grandeur.

Twitter, the next Pfizer acquisition?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm confused. What does this program do that necessitates a browser plugin?

<comment><AUTHOR> sourcecow is really orientated more toward the person starting out on twitter vs the person with an established 500 followers/friends. the plugin detects a "follow" event on twitter and window appears the moment you follow someone, at that time you're asked 3 questions, why, how you found them, what you hope to gain by following them.

without a plugin or a way to hit the person at the moment they decided to follow someone you'd have to care to come to the site and tell why afterwards etc. the plugin just facilitates the "get'm now while its hot in yer head"</comment></comment>


ARM server pioneer Calxeda plans restructuring after running out of cash - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/12/19/arm-server-pioneer-calxeda-plans-restructuring-after-running-out-of-cash/ <comment><AUTHOR> Its now looking more like Google and Facebook and the big players are interested in building there own ARM stuff, and setting yourself up as a vendor is perhaps the wrong model.

But mainly, its been impossible to buy an ARM server from any of these people, or rent time on way for validation.

<comment><USER2> I would like a 1U ARM server for home and perhaps a few for my colo if they were 64-bit and price competitive to the Xeon E3... even if significantly slower. Unfortunately, they are basically unobtanium and an E3 Xeon build can be done for ~$1k.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you really need 64 bit? Could you manage with more processes and more servers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> some performance comparisons by Anand:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/6757/calxedas-arm-server- teste...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6757/calxedas-arm-server-tested/11)

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/6757/calxedas-arm-server- teste...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6757/calxedas-arm-server-tested/12)

while not bad, it doesn't seem to have enough advantage to beat Xeon in real market (especially while being more expensive than Xeon systems). Like with Sun's Niagara processors, being better only in a narrow niche may be not enough for a financial success in pretty general server market.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't have data but I have a feeling they made the mistake of acting like a corporation while they were a startup.

When you do that, you spend $100M.

Raising $100M is OK but you must save it and wait until you are sure the market is picking up.

You should act very nimble. Possibly a very thin management layer, %90 engineers. Near zero marketing and attendance to marketing events. Just silent focus on IP.

Like I said I have no data and probably some substantial amount had to be spent in HW manufacturing, but it feels like they overspent the money, and acted without being sure the time has come for the market.

<comment><USER5> For $55M they designed two fairly sophisticated processors and were working on the third generation. It's possible they could have been leaner, but I don't know by how much.

<comment><USER6> "designed two processors". No. We had working A0 production runs of two chips, with a the A0 of the third generation in the post when we closed. Leaner? Not really. Sales team was three people more the executives, everyone else was engineering. Meaner? Who on earth pulls off two working A0 runs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They were too early, and with that didn't target a viable niche before going for the big things when 64 bit came along. Something like a 32-bit ARM tied to hardware that accelerates running memcached could have been viable for quite some time, for example. nVidia probably have a long term vision not dissimilar to that, with the ARM being a mere general purpose front end for an attached GPU, and looking at the new game consoles that appears to be the way many things are headed there too.

This will predictably cause the Intel brigade to cheer up, but it will be temporary. In the time since Calxeda started ARM has just consolidated and grown, especially into home routers where MIPS is looking increasingly like it's gone for good. Ultimately when ARM do finally crack the data centre the impact is going to be profit margins for almost all chip players going down very fast. Going into this market without a USP that isn't simply cheap general purpose SoC is destined to end in trouble. If you look at the players that survived on mobile they aren't just integration outfits for ARM/Imagination, but actually add value through other custom pieces too, either GPUs (say nVidia) or re-implementing the core themselves, like Qualcomm.

This is at the point where I really hope Imagination do something good with MIPS and it isn't consigned to history as ARM being too dominant could prove to be a real mess.

</comment><comment><USER8> The allthingsd article submitted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938138) has more info, including verification from company execs.

</comment><comment><USER9> They were way too early to the market. Maybe it would've been ok to be there since Cortex A15, but being there at the Cortex A9 generation always seemed premature - at least for big customers like HP, Facebook, and so on. Maybe they should've tried selling them to the same people who like the idea of a much weaker Raspberry Pi server. Instead they tried to sell only to a few big guys, and none of them were really that interested.

I'm not too worried about them, though. They'll probably get acquired by someone like Samsung, or Qualcomm, or Nvidia.

<comment><USER6> Writing this as a now ex-employee, I'm sure that our IP will live on. We had some really neat stuff in the pipeline, and I look forwards to seeing it hit the big time in the next few years. Whether Calxeda proper will be acquired or whether the IP will be sold piecemeal only time will tell. Personally I'm not convinced that the company in it's "entirety" will be bough out. At this point it's the IP not the assets or people that's valuable.

I also totally agree with your assessment that we had a cool idea too early. That was in fact what Barry said at today's closing down meeting. ARM in the datacenter will happen, but that we didn't have a 64 bit chip really limited our hardware offerings to say the least.

<comment><USER10> Sorry for your lost job. In all honesty though, I don't think ARM in the data centre will ever be anything more than a niche product. Considering Intel is 2 manufacturing processes ahead, the microarchitecture and any potential advantages there won't even really come into play, and Intel's not exactly any slouch either. If 64bit ARM came out a year ago, there might have been a fighting chance, but any chances of a major uptake pretty much died with the release of Avoton. That may very well have been why the next round of funding fell through. Intel's next two generations, Broadwell and Skylake, are both heavily focused on reducing power consumption, and achieving parity with their peformance/watt would be enough of a challenge, let alone creating a significant enough advantage to take away a real amount of market share.

Best of luck on your next venture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought AMD was entering the ARM space.

Besides, someone will probably end up buying the IP from Calxeda if they do shutdown. Maybe HP?

<comment><USER5> AMD may be the last ARM server processor vendor left standing (I don't consider Marvell a serious contender and AMCC is iffy). Perhaps Calxeda did all the work to create the market which AMD will be able to come in and take.</comment></comment>


UK "tech city" doubles number of start-ups - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterprise/368872/uk-tech-city-doubles-number-of-start-ups <comment><USER2> This is such BS it's unbelievable.

Beyond the obvious correlation/causation issues, tech city offers startups little direct benefit. The advantages are going to be:

1\. Subsidised office/living space converted from olympic village (2013+)

2\. More large tech companies to help attract tech talent from E Europe and provide a visible alternative choice to the UK tech grads who primarily go into banking

3\. ?

It's hugely unclear what impact this program is going to have. I support it, because I think that making [UK] startups more visible as a career path is a major win. But the developments may also kill the current tech area by raising rent -- the community is there because it's a cheap and fun area for young people.</comment>


Let's do this again. Predictions for the 2020s - <AUTHOR> Since recently my post from 2010 was shared asking for predictions for the upcoming decade[1], it made sense to go around one more time. This time let's do a little more structure.
1. What do you think were the three biggest changes in the 2010s (Events or inventions)? 2. What do you think will be three things of significance that happen over the next decade? 3. If you played last time, how would you score yourself? If you made mistakes, why do you think that is? Any lessons you picked up from reading your previous post and comparing what actually happened?
1. Elon Musk and truly reusable rockets, technology shown to be a much more dangerous thing than we believed (social media, surveillance state, addictive gaming), and exoplanet discoveries
2. disaggregated groups of people radicalizing one another and the fallout from that, human lifespan lengthened through medication (aging treated as a disease), and fusion finally
3. I made three predictions. The last one, that flat panel displays would never truly approach wallpaper sizes for the home, was right. The second one, ubiquitous computing finally arrives, I'm going to score half-right. We didn't get RFID chips and walk-up computing, but we do have computers and net access with everything from our TVs to sous vide machines. The first one, that Iran would see some sort of drastic change? Blew that one completely. They look today about the same as they did then, on the razors edge of disaster.
To me the most interesting part of this comparison is how incremental the 2010s were. Current trends in 2010 tended to continue along. I blew it when I thought "this trend cannot continue". Turns out it did. This is a humbling lesson.
I am also happy that my stretch goal, finding earth-like exoplanets, was reached (mostly). I did not realize that this exoplanet story is likely one to span several generations. Damn, science moves slowly at times.
1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681 <comment><USER2> 1\. I think the biggest change was that almost everyone got addicted to their phone screens and Facebook and got connected all over the world. I know Facebook is pre 2010 but I think it really took off with the use of smartphones.

2\. I think the biggest things of significance is that treatment of cancer will improve even more and global warming will be acknowledge as a fact by most people. It will be more common to work as self-employed (often from home) rather than in big corporate open offices.

3\. N/A</comment>


Show HN: Switchboard – makes it easy to route incoming calls and messages - <AUTHOR> https://goswitchboard.com/blog/2017/12/25/introducing-switchboard/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome! I even wrote a script a while back to do this. [https://github.com/Danilka/twilio- forwarding](https://github.com/Danilka/twilio-forwarding)

The main question: Can I answer text messages that were forwarded to me / initiate a call back from that number?

What about advance routing? Based on time or external sources? Numbers blocking, etc.?

Feedback on setup:

\- It was super confusing to connect Twilio account that I already had.

\- Signing up with Gmail only made me think for a second.

\- Twilio connector only worked on a third try.

\- I doubt that I would pay $6/mo for it when the time comes :-( Maybe a couple of bux, but not 6. (I don't want to discourage you here, just trying to be honest and give unfiltered feedback as a user, who is very interested.)

I hope you guys succeed, this would be great!

P.S. Awesome name for such a product!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thank you for your feedback!

Two-way messaging and call proxying is likely the next big features we'll be rolling out.

We went with the Twilio Connect route initially as a low-risk approach to see if there's an appetite for a something like this. Sadly it has not been a great user experience and we're definitely going to reconsider it (Twilio Connect).

As you might have guessed, we haven't actually decided on pricing yet but I wanted to put _something_ on that page so that people can get a feel for how much it would cost them.

And yeah, the system we were using for auth (Cognito) did not at that time have an adequate 2FA solution, which was why we went with Google. Now that they do, we'll likely use that which would allow people to also signup with a username/password (in addition to Google, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's cool that you're not locked into Switchboard if you sign up for the service. You can always go back to managing your calls some other way. You're locked into Twilio, of course, but that doesn't seem like much of an inconvenience.

</comment><comment><USER4> I dont clearly understand who migt need this, since any SIP account comes with these features (purchase from any voip service provider or host your softswitch like Asterisk, Mizu softswitch or 3CX).

<comment><USER5> It's a Google Voice replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great project and product. I had GrandCentral (now Google Voice) which I loved, but is clearly under-supported (nearly abandoned?) by Google -- this was immensely helpful during my traveling consultant days where i'd find myself on different desks everyday. I'd love to find a commercial-grade stable product (i hope you are it?!)

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't say abandoned as there was a massive facelift for both the mobile app and the web interface recently.

However, it doesn't seem to be a primary concern for them as it does take a significant amount of time for those updates to come to fruition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems like a nice product, but unfortunately I can't create an account - after signing in via my Google account, I was redirected to a page [1] with an infinitely looping loading gif. I tried clearing my cookies for the domain, but no luck.

I'm running Chromium 64 on Linux.

[1]: account.goswitchboard.com/signup

<comment><AUTHOR> Heya, I think I got to the root cause of that issue and I deployed an updated version that (hopefully) fixes it.

If you would still like to give it another shot I would appreciate it :)

<comment><USER8> Nope, still doesn't work. Here's a dump of the console log in case it's of any help: [http://ix.io/ER9](http://ix.io/ER9)

<comment><AUTHOR> The console dump was super useful, thank you for that!

I _think_ it might be because you have third-party cookies disabled [1], and the Google Auth client uses an iframe with cookies to do its thing. I replicated it myself by disabling third-party cookies and the results were similar to what you described.

I'll look into what I can do about this on my end tomorrow. Thank you again for your time!

[1]: [https://stackoverflow.com/a/42806178/1101070](https://stackoverflow.com/a/42806178/1101070)

<comment><USER8> Interesting. I log into a handful of other sites using Google OAuth and have never had a problem. Let me know if you get it figured out, I would still like to check out your service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the basic idea of the service. Having to have an additional Twilio account is somewhat complicated and does not add to an easy user experience.

<comment><USER2> As a developer I REALLY like the fact that I can connect it to my Twilio account and have full control over my numbers. This way I don't have to deal with overcharges and can keep/port the number through Twilio.

As a consumer, it will probably be hard to scale this. But you can always add an option.

Smart move for the product introduction to a niche audience!

<comment><USER10> You can always port it's not legal for someone to try and prevent you from porting a local number and in most casses the provider can't stop it</comment></comment></comment>


OctoSQL v0.2.0: Excel support, TVF's and more - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cube2222/octosql/releases/tag/v0.2.0 <comment><AUTHOR> As usual, we're very interested in feedback and feature requests if you had time to check OctoSQL out!</comment>


Waterproof Lithium-Air Batteries - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22926/

<comment><USER2> Developing? Not developed?

Sorry, there are too many stories that start this way, and then vanish.</comment>


Show HN: Git-psuh – Fix your mistakes through negative reinforcement - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Detry322/git-psuh <comment><USER2> All I see is a blank master branch? what the h?</comment>


What will be Facebook's AdWords? - <AUTHOR> http://www.gooddinosaur.com/2010/03/what-will-facebooks-adwords-be.html

<comment><USER2> Facebook credits</comment>


Building an Empire with a Single Brick: Meet Patrick McKenzie - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bench.co/patrick-mckenzie?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=p_mac&utm_campaign=twitter_spon_p_mac <comment><USER2> Patrick has to be one of the nicest people in our community. Whenever I shot him an email, even with the worst questions, he always took the time to respond. And please keep in mind that he used to consult big companies at that time and charge good money for it, but he always helped the community like this.

Thank you Patrick and all the best with Starfighter.

<comment><USER3> Something to note, for those who want to flood nice people with emails: I sent him a couple emails (probably similarly stupid questions -- I recall one was about his thoughts on Twilio having a "build your own appointment reminder" page -- not a direct competitor for your customers, but that does seem a little rude, no?), and never got a response. Nice people get busy, and it's best to consider if clever googling / just trying it will be a better use of the shared public resource called 'Patrick's Good Will'. In my case, I could have just e.g. assumed his thoughts mirrored mine, because even if they didn't, not really important to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I came to USA in 2004 (I think right around time when he moved to Japan) and learned about him first through Business of Software forum. [http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.518897.4...](http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.518897.48)

I still remember the first time I read about Bingo Card Creator. I immediately dismissed the idea. But as noted in the article, it was a small brick and he kept stacking them and look how far he has come.

Thanks to his advice, I have also made decent progress in my own career. As a thank you, I wanted to get him a gift as a token of appreciation. And here's what he replied:

"Nope. I tend to just buy things that I want, considering my wants are generally small."

[https://twitter.com/patio11/status/334333114912481281](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/334333114912481281)

Patrick, you are a role model and an inspiration. Thank you for everything and wish you all the best with your new venture.

</comment><comment><USER5> "He works a (shocking) average of 20-25 hours a week—a stark contrast to his former life as a salaryman."

Kudos @patio11! Will this pace continue with Starfighter? For your and your family's sake, I hope so.

<comment><USER6> I'm hoping it does or I'm firing myself. The last few months dealing with the BCC acquisition and getting SF running and AR settled down simultaneously have been rather rough (a combination of raw hours and how many were between 1 AM and 7 AM due to time zones).

<comment><USER7> The modal message on our internal chat channel: "Why aren't you asleep, Patrick?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the things I loved about BCC is how it hit many of us over the head with the idea that a product does not have to be 'cool' or innovative or even really all that interesting to make money. Au contraire - bingo is about as uncool and boring as you can get. It kind of opens your mind to new horizons in business terms.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious about other projects created in the same vein that are making money. I saw a typing tutor webpage posted here on HN, and a stock portfolio tracking service, but don't know if they ever became profitable.

<comment><USER10> MicroConf just concluded (patio11 spoke) and I spent the conference collecting businesses doing just this.

My favorite two were

1\. Software for people who sell and install granite countertops to help their customers preview what their counters are going to look like, doing millions of ARR.

2\. Software to help high schools and colleges schedule umpires/referees for sports leagues.

<comment><USER11> I did some (non-dev) work for a small software company in Australia who make workflow software for car body shops.

There's so many 'niche' markets around that are worth millions if you can hit them (but they're not sexy like social networking or consumer mobile apps)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Making 30k a week, is very different from saying he made 30k some weeks. 120k in Profit is hardly something I would call an 'Empire'.

I appreciate the sentiments of this community, its unquestioning reverence towards Patrick, but the article is full of misleading statements. What is factually correct, can still be grossly misleading.

<comment><USER13> > I appreciate the sentiments of this community, its unquestioning reverence > towards Patrick

I honestly don't. I mean, nice guy, sure, and a great writer, but I don't see that he has built anything I consider particularly inspiring, or successful. In fact he has had quite a few misses, which were announced with the usual self-assured write-ups, only to disappear later.

(I only say this in light of the surprisingly large following patio11 has, he is certainly more accomplished than I or most most posters here will probably ever be.)

<comment><USER14> Personally, I think he's one of the most inspiring examples of personal success that I've seen on HN.

I know I'm not brilliant enough to change the world with some new revolutionary invention or discovery, and spending years killing myself to try and build some ultimately ephemeral business empire holds zero attraction for me. Achieving a comfortable lifestyle in which I work for myself and can reserve most of my time for my friends, family, and hobbies is my main aspiration, and patio11's success at building that lifestyle is enormously inspirational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> $30k/week? Would love to read more about how that worked. I thought my $180/hour with $1k per diem for on-site was phenomenal.

Jeez, I need to charge more.

<comment><USER16> I'm curious what justification you use for a daily allowance of $1,000. Are you renting ferraris, eating fabulous lunches and dinners, and staying in a plush hotel?

Or do you not mean per diem in the literal sense?

<comment><USER15> I hate going on-site. It is a waste of time. It is a "go away" price.

EDIT: And companies routinely pay for it.

<comment><USER17> care to share your line of business?

<comment><USER15> in between software engineer and ds these days

<comment><USER17> ds = data scientist?

<comment><USER15> Correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you've read much of Patrick's writing (over on Kalzumeus), you won't find anything surprising in this article - still as authentic and consistent as ever.

</comment><comment><USER19> I didn't know about patio11's podcast ([https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kalzumeus-software- podca...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kalzumeus-software- podcasts/id560734474?mt=2)), subscribed! Great article.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Another thing—be clear with your clients in terms of what their expectations are, and provide falsifiable success metrics"

I'm going to assume that that is a typo (and they meant unfalsifiable) as it doesn't really make sense in the context of what I've heard about Patrick before.

<comment><USER21> I think they're referring to the philosopher Karl Popper's notion of 'falsifiability', the idea that a claim must be possible to proven false to be admissible in a scientific theory.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability)

<comment><USER20> ok, this makes lot of sense, I guess I somewhat misparsed the text.

EDIT: I wonder if it counts as misreading or misunderstanding, to not notice that a word is an auto-antonym?

<comment><AUTHOR> How is that an antonym? The point to "falsifiable" is the statement is made about an event is capable of being false, not that it is false.

<comment><USER20> auto-antonym[0] is a word that means both one thing, and something else that is the opposite of that. This dictionary[1] (second result on google) has definition one meaning the opposite of definition two, thus the word is an auto-antonym.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto- antonym](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym)

[1] [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/falsifiable](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/falsifiable)

<comment><USER22> Those two definitions aren't opposites of each other. They're two different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This guy is awesome. I read some articles of his on kalzumeus ages ago and thought, "he really gets it." To see the pic of him and know more about him is really great. Thanks for this post.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ohhhhhhhhh, Patrick is the Bingo Card Creator dude!

Somehow I didn't make that connection before, even though I follow him on Twitter.

<comment><USER25> You probably know him as patio11

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I noticed the bench.co link in the article, without even realizing the article was hosted on bench.co. Very clever content rich way to do marketing.

"For example, Bench handles all of Patrick's bookkeeping. He's grateful for the freedom to "never think about it again.""

<comment><USER27> He has mentioned Bench a few times as a business model/company he admires in various podcasts he's been on. I wasn't surprised in the slightest when I saw that he was featured on their blog. Either they got word of it, or he reached out to them to be featured (I'm guessing the former).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Brick by brick, the wall gets higher, and then suddenly, a wall." All it takes is one brick, and the commitment to doing it again tomorrow.

Wow.

<comment><USER29> Amy Hoy has a great elaboration on this strategy at [https://unicornfree.com/stacking-the- bricks](https://unicornfree.com/stacking-the-bricks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love the articles and comments Patrick makes. He helps remind us that there are good intelligent people in this world with good hearts.

</comment><comment><USER31> Get that photographer to take more pictures, Patrick!

<comment><USER6> He only does weddings, so that's unlikely.

<comment><USER31> That's a pity. It's the best picture of you that I've seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> _By the end of his stint as a consultant, he was making $30,000 a week_

Upon hearing this, The IRS is drooling all over the place.

</comment><comment><USER33> Speaking of starfighter (it's in TFA), is an alien race going to abduct people who are good at starfighter? [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/)</comment>


Proquints: Identifiers That Are Readable, Spellable, and Pronounceable (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/html/0901.4016 <comment><USER2> English pronunciation mentioned together with words "unique" and "unambiguous"―is that a joke? Oh yeah, no way that people pronounce 'u' and 'a' similarly.

 _"There are 6 unambiguous 1-letter vowels"_ ―since when are vowels in English unambiguous? English writing should properly be classified as logographic, since you can't know how a word is pronounced from its spelling, or vice- versa.

Has the author ever communicated his own middle and last names in a phone call? A big benefit of numeric identifiers in the first place is that it's easier to dictate them without error. Even in my native phonemic language, with words or letters it's too often back to the Folks' Phonetic Alphabet: _"No, D as in Dmitry."_

<comment><USER3> The strings only have to be unique and pronounceable to be valuable, they don't have to be uniquely pronounceable.

When scanning a list of records by eye looking for an entry or entries, it's helpful for the identifiers to be pronounceable because that allows normal people to hold more in their short term memory than they could if the strings were all gibberish and each entry ended up consuming multiple short term memory slots in the brain. Sure, there is a tiny chance of collision but that chance is still there when scanning by eye and trying to find a GUID that starts with the first few letters of the GUID you're looking for. At that point you verify you actually have the one you want. And yes, there are lots of occassions where people look at identifiers, that's why pronounceable identifiers have value.

<comment><USER2> I'm baffled as to what you imagine the use-case to be. Is that how e.g. IP addresses are used, in your opinion―by finding them in an onscreen list? Or SS numbers? Or credit card numbers?

<comment><USER4> Replacing hexadecimal stack traces?

<comment><USER2> As others mentioned, this is the least feasible use-case exactly because the time window is short and the return for the introduction of the new scheme is dubious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> See also the Bubble Babble encoding (2000) [1] that is essentially the same idea. Note that they are only useful as _private_ identifiers because as public identifiers you can't avoid them spelling profanity; many geocoding systems entirely forwent vowels for that reason [2].

[1] [http://wiki.yak.net/589](http://wiki.yak.net/589)

[2] [https://github.com/google/open-location- code/wiki/Evaluation...](https://github.com/google/open-location- code/wiki/Evaluation-of-Location-Encoding-Systems)

<comment><USER6> I (re)discovered a similar scheme about 7 years ago for encoding numbers based on the observation that 20 consonants + 5 vowels offers essentially the same information density as base 10 numbers. Excluded 'c' because it seemed the most redundant (with 'k' and 's'). I've found it particularly useful for generating random temporary passwords that can be communicated verbally rather than needing to be emailed.

[https://github.com/femto113/node- pronounceable](https://github.com/femto113/node-pronounceable)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, how the example ip address conversions and up sounding vaguely Turkish or Arabic...

<comment><USER8> To me, they all sound like the names of lost cities from H. P. Lovecraft.

 _Not since the wretched dark sun last rose over Lusab-Babad, or the accursed sorcerer-priests of Haguz-Biram last spilled human blood on their altars, had such indescribable evil lurked in the shadows as now did amongst the filth- ridden canals and dank buttresses of Budov-Kuras, Budov-Kuras which squatted upon the forbidden ruins of Mudof-Sakat, even its name blotted from memory by the horror of its crimes._

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think urbit uses something like this for it's address space.

<comment><USER10> I find Urbit's significantly more pronouncable. I wonder if it was inspired by proquint.

<comment><USER5> Urbit's "phonetic base" is much more pronouncable because it always allocate carefully chosen three letters per octet [1].

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/a/38175707/225272](https://stackoverflow.com/a/38175707/225272)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another idea: find 256 different syllables and use that to encode 8-bit numbers. This way we also can avoid profanity (except for the rare case where a string of multiple harmless syllables expresses a profanity).

<comment><USER12> or find 65,536 words and use them to encode 16-bit numbers, then you could leverage your existing word associations to memorize

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> NOTE: 2009 should be in the title.

> _Debuggers could input and output memory addresses as proquints as an > alternative to hex._

...but why? In debuggers, you're not concerned with memorising the address of an object as much as you are concerned with what the hell is mangling said object. There's no "value-add" for proquints, here. If you were live-debugging in a session with someone else, sure, but how often are you generally doing that?

> _Network tools such as browsers, ping, netstat, traceroute, etc. could input > and output proquints as an alternative to dotted quads._

Again, what is the value-add? Since I've known 4-octet IP addresses and numbers my whole life, it would take more effort to translate from proquint, to understand the output on the screen. Adding a translation layer in a cut- over fashion instead of a phased-in fashion just seems like wholly unnecessary overhead, only intended to further justify the proquint, yeah?

<comment><USER14> Yes, that debugger example really confused me and made me wonder why he added it. Anyone who has actually done live-debugging sessions will know that hex is perfectly pronouncible, and furthermore is a direct mapping to binary.

<comment><USER13> True, even in post-mortem debugging (assuming I have the objects from the heap), it's not like I'm going to exclude the addresses of objects in my write-ups (or as they're exposed via commands, such as !sosex.mdso[0]).

In native, if you're on the stack (e.g.: not using pointers), then addresses don't mean much of anything and if you're using pointers, memory optimisation means the address could mean feck-all after a cycle or two (assuming you've looking at an iDNA/TTT[1]).

So, to agree with you, who are agreeing with me: It is _quite_ odd that this would be a principal argument for proquints.

[0] - [https://github.com/lowleveldesign/debug- recipes/blob/master/...](https://github.com/lowleveldesign/debug- recipes/blob/master/debugging-using-windbg/sosex.help.txt)

[1] - [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- hardware/drivers/de...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- hardware/drivers/debugger/time-travel-debugging-record)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The suggested optional magic number prefix to a sequence of proquints is "0q-"."

That is interesting - when I designed "Oh By Codes"[1] I chose "0x" as the prefix to identify that sequence.

My entire life, every time I have seen a hex number I have pronounced the prefix in my head as "Oh By ...." \- hence the name.

[1] [https://0x.co](https://0x.co)

</comment><comment><USER16> What could possibly go wrong?[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10409837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10409837)</comment>


I've worn Alexa-enabled glasses for two weeks. They're driving me bananas - <AUTHOR> https://www.greenwichtime.com/lifestyle/article/I-ve-worn-Alexa-enabled-glasses-for-two-weeks-15457078.php%22 <comment><USER2> It would be difficult to concoct a more diabolic mechanism for driving people insane than a disembodied voice that is constantly whispering in your ears.

The whole experiment reads like the beginning of a Black Mirror episode!

<comment><USER3> Read "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut.

[http://tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html](http://tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "WashPost," chirped my glasses over my morning coffee to let me know about a > news alert. "Outlook," Alexa said minutes later, interrupting a real > conversation with an offer to read my latest email.

I think this is the problem that Apple is trying to fix with moving its software development platform (Mac) to (A beefed-up version of) the same hardware as the target platform (iPhone/iWatch).

Awareness of social context is going to be the next killer app.

<comment> core-questions > Awareness of social context is going to be the next killer app.

Hahaha, ironic that this is something most developers capable of these kinds of programming can't handle IRL

<comment><USER5> I don't know if it's just because of our large corporate company culture, but no one in our developer teams is really socially inept like the usual trope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Take them off.</comment>


NASA announces results from Gravity Probe B - <AUTHOR> http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/

<comment><USER2> It's a shame that mainstream news doesn't talk about this stuff, it's fascinating.

Though I guess most people aren't turned on by _geodetic precession_ and _frame dragging_.</comment>


Resistance to the Use of Anesthesia in the Mid-19th Century (2005) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.docdroid.net/V0s9uDp/meyer2015.pdf <comment><USER2> Weird how people could come up with reason to hate anything at all. Even anesthesia!

What could we be so wrong about today, as much as they were wrong about this 150 years ago?

</comment><comment><USER3> The high death rate had a chilling effect. It took 20-30 years for the tech to become safer.</comment>


Video conferencing without the video - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@chris_82106/video-conferencing-without-the-video-6330ee1b1e3e#.8kjep0set <comment><USER2> One thing I'd add to this: being able to pretend you're someone else.

This concept brings the old "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog" idea [1] to video conferencing too, which could be extremely useful in some situations.

For example, imagine the target of harassment or persecution being able to express emotions visually without revealing identity. Or someone in witness protection. Or an undercover journalist in a compromising situation.

Of course, on the flip side, this tech could be used for evil too.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog)

</comment><comment><USER3> This idea was touched upon in 'Black Mirror':

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Looks like that is on Netflix, so will have to check it out.

Do they make the idea look promising? Or really dumb?

<comment><USER3> Neither. People take it for granted that every interaction is an avatar.

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I wonder to what extent people already do that online with text communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. This post is about an idea we're considering implementing. Would greatly appreciate the feedback of HN community. Thanks!

I'll be around for any questions or discussion.</comment>


Formula 1 e-sports now more exciting than the real thing - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/11/formula-1-esports-now-more-exciting-than-the-real-thing-and-thats-a-problem/ <comment><USER4> > Indeed, so boring was the final race of the season (and to be honest, the > two that preceded it)

Abu Dhabi is a boring racetrack that makes passing quite difficult, but if you could not find something interesting about the Brazil race (Ricciardo started at 14th and made his way up to 6th and Hamilton started _on the pit lane_ and clawed his way up to 4th) or the Mexico race (won by Verstappen, a 20 year old guy who was not driving a Mercedes or Ferrari, with a _19 second margin over the 2nd place Mercedes,_ which has been dominant and is a much better car), it's possible you're just not an F1 fan.

That's fine, and it probably points to a good audience for the "e-sports" racing. Maybe some of those guys will convert to being F1 fans, maybe some of them won't, but it is not an expensive experiment for F1 to run. Pretty much all they have to do is push this while not embarrassing themselves too badly with the fans of motor racing who couldn't care less about e-sports. (who knows? The loud reaction among fans to the F1 logo change might indicate that they're all insane anyway, so it is impossible to predict)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I think you're right about most of this - I watched most of the races this season. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in most races in the middle of the pack too, like "will force india do well, or will they crash into each other" or just watching fernando alonso drive the wheels off of his mclaren, despite it lacking top-end speed.

That said, I also noticed that a lot of cars had to hold back quite a bit: the current aerodynamics of the cars means the choppy air seems to run about 1.5 seconds off of the back of the lead car, so if you're staying in clearer air, you're out of DRS. Meaning: people even trying to get into overtaking of the lead car are drastically lowering the lifetime of their tires if nothing else. Combine that with the wider car and there's not a lot of actual overtaking going on in race-leadership positions. It happens, but not a lot - more often I think there's the under/overcut calculations about when a pit stop happens, and the pass happens virtually with time lost in the pit lane.

This is all exacerbated by mercedes's dominance in the qualifying rounds. In a season where so many races were won from the front row if the leaders get out of the first lap clean without a crash, this is all huge. It adds up to: Hamilton totally dominated the second half of the season, easily winning the championship and Mercedes taking the constructor's championship even earlier. In terms of leadership swaps and contention for first, it's a boring season. Still: can't discount Hamilton here, he is an amazing driver and clearly the best on the circuit.

Overall? I had to start watching the red bulls and force india scrapping over the midfield, because the front of the pack was indeed boring. And I'm not sure that really appeals to average viewers.

<comment> DC-3 You're absolutely right here - DRS is just a little too short to be useful without a massive pace disparity between the two cars (attacking car is on far better tyres, for example). Hamilton has said that the point where turbulence kicks in is about 1.1 - 1.2 seconds and I have reached the same conclusion this year.

Formula 1 should seriously consider mandating reduced aerodynamic complexity. It might not be a great solution, but it's a better alternative to artificial DRS and snooze-fest races.

For what it's worth, the Sauber, Toro Rosso and Haas cars had a great battle last race. That said, turbulence affected them too, almost as badly as it did the front-runners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I misread the title, thinking they were talking about Formula E. [http://www.fiaformulae.com/en](http://www.fiaformulae.com/en)

Watching other people play video games has never felt remotely appealing to me. Must be one of the things somebody my generation truly does not get.

<comment><USER7> For those who haven't followed the link, Formula E is essentially just like F1 but with all-electric cars. It's a bit slower, but the competition is great, it's my personal favorite racing series. The official youtube channel uploads the full races for those interested.

As mentioned in the article, Formula E also runs an e-sports version of its series. They had live e-races at every racing event last year. Unfortunately, the races were quite bad to watch - pretty much exactly like playing racing games online (everyone goes in hard at the 1st corner, lots of collisions). The F1 esports final was 10x more fun to watch, although there was some aggressive driving, they mostly drove the same way the pros do.

<comment><USER8> Formula E has one huge issue: the tracks they race on. Street circuits with mostly 90 degree corners and not much overtaking opportunities. It is somewhat mitigated by the energy management aspect, where the following car can reduce their power for a while and then come back with a vengeance to grab the position.

The best Formula E race I've seen was the practice race before Season 1 at Donnington Park, a real racing track with sweeping, cambered corners fast and slow, uphills and downhills and a few big braking spots that allow for overtaking.

The world is full of race tracks that can't be used for Formula 1 any more, but would suit Formula E cars very well. Like Brands Hatch for example. Of course, the tracks are not usually suitable for large audiences or are at remote locations which makes it unappealing for the series from a business point of view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When it comes to racing, the new push into e-sports is really exciting to me because it adds a huge element of accessibility. Cars are expensive, and actually owning a car that you take on the track is expensive and time consuming, but with a racing wheel, a PC/console, and a VR headset, you can get a pretty visceral and convincing facsimile of a high performance car.

The first time I tried racing in VR (in Dirt Rally), I had the brilliant idea of using a Group B car. On a flat screen, it just feels really fast and requires intense focus. In VR, you really feel like you're sitting on a rocket and the car is trying to kill you.

<comment><USER10> _When it comes to racing, the new push into e-sports is really exciting to me because it adds a huge element of accessibility._

It could also break down gender barriers where either rules or physical intensity of a sport results in segregation (e.g. soccer) or a lack of female participation (e.g. F1).

<comment><USER11> Why do you have to bring gender into this. If you really want to talk about females, I'll tell you where it really matters - there are many female engineers and mechanics in every team already contributing to the sport.

<comment> DC-3 F1 is about the most meritocratic environment in the world because of the single-minded focus on winning.

[https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/may/16/f1-formula- one...](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/may/16/f1-formula-one-women- ruth-buscombe-sauber)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yeah, Vettel and Ferrari threw away the championship starting in Singapore, but really cemented their downfall with a last minute mechanical failure on the grid.. stuff that doesn't (and probably shouldn't) happen in sim racing, that represent the culmination of decades of engineering philosophy, hundreds of millions of dollars spent, hundreds of thousands of man-hours.. what were we comparing F1 to again? video games?

<comment><USER13> Video games that are a culmination of decades of engineering, artistic, and design philosophy. Millions of dollars spent, and many thousands of man hours put into each version delivered. Not quite as much as F1 but do not underestimate the technical effort and coordination to get a game shipped.

<comment><USER12> Don't get me wrong, I love sim racing and there is definitely a place for sim racing competition, but it's really no comparison to the real thing in my mind because of the high stakes contribution to the competition by hundreds of engineers, not just 1 driver.. the outcome is different teams really have different personalities and those personalities show through in the performance of their car, team, etc. through randomness of mechanical performance/failures, pit stop strategy/execution, team strategy/execution, and so many more dimensions than you will get in a sim competition. As the great Murray Walker said, "anything can happen in F1, and it usually does"

<comment><USER13> My comparison was running a Formula 1 team to making Video Games. Not playing them as an e-sport. Of course competing in a sport in real life is far different to doing so in a video game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I actually watched the video in the article and thought it was really exciting. I prefer it to the real thing because the drivers can take more risks, leading to more exciting passes.

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree with other commenters here - while some of the races turned into a procession, in almost all races, there were elements of interest among the smaller teams lower down the ranks.

I think the biggest problem here is the depth of the pockets of each team. Those with bigger engineering budgets are dominating the podiums, while the smaller team struggle with 'hand me down' parts that are outdated when they get to them.

F1 has had to ride the hard line between actually showing progress in automotive R&D and still being somewhat a gladiatorial sport.

The progress made with hybrid engines, energy recovery, construction materials etc. have been monumental, especially in the past decade. However, that has also lead to less noisy cars, and a reduced element of danger. Good things when it comes to road car operation, but can work against the sport in the heat of battle on the track.

We can applaud the safety standard that get better each year, especially after the death's of Senna, and more recently, Jules Bianchi, but that sense of safety is also turning people away. No one wants to see a driver die (A driver's chance of dying in an F1 season in the 60's/70's was something like 20%), but again - the sport has become somewhat sterile and staid because of it. (Not to mention - Ugly, with the introduction of the 2018 halos).

Perhaps the fascination with eSports is that you CAN actually bang another car off the track, and you will get to see the spectacle of a crash without having to live with the fact that you might end someones life in the resulting conflagration?

<comment><USER16> F1 has a massive cultural problem about who wins. Every broadcast ends with cutting away from some incredible mid-pack dicing to watch 1 car on its own do a final clear lap and cross the line, then people celebrating.

Even when cutting to overtakes when cars pass. That move was set up 5 corners ago that's the interesting part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Give me a low-latency link to a remotely controlled F1, and I can forget about all the drivers... Besides, F1 with the introduction of halo is already alienating its long-time fans, making cars slowly matching the ugliness of current IndyCar chassis, so many fans will seek to escape watching those monstrosities off to e-sports, where they can drive pleasant cars. For me this was the last season I was watching F1 unless they come back with open cockpit. I will watch Roborace once they go live, as those cars simply look stunning and at some point will be much faster than any human-driven cars.

</comment><comment><USER18> So I mean first order "excitment" is over takes and how often first changes. Which this article doesn't mention at all.

<comment><USER19> Didn't sound like the real race had any except 13th/14th? but I watched a bit of the video and there was tons of excitement and I can't say I've ever cared for F1

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> They also needed to save fuel, I know Raikonnen did and probably Verstappen too so that was pretty boring when drivers cant push to the max. Add refueling back, make it more exciting. Instead they keep making the rules worse, like changing the number of allowed engines in 2018 from 4 to 3 before penalties kick in

<comment><USER8> > They also needed to save fuel,

Fuel saving is not really a thing any more. It was when the new turbo-hybrids were introduced but with the new injection systems and higher efficiency engines as well as increased fuel limits, there hasn't been really a need for running economy for the sake of making it to the end on fuel.

Mercedes engines give more than 50% thermal efficiency now. That is phenomenal.

> Add refueling back, make it more exciting.

Not only is refueling terribly dangerous but I can't really agree that it would be more exciting to see teams play with strategy rather than try to overtake on track or by undercut/overcut on the pit lane (I liked seeing Ferrari play their good old fake pitstop overcut with Räikkönen vs. Perez a few races back, just like in the Schumacher-Todt days).

A lot of people are agreeing that the major inhibitor to the competition are the current front wings. They develop a lot of the cars' downforce and are the reason the cars are so fast at the moment, but completely lose their efficiency when following another car. Compare a last year F1 front wing [0] with one from about 15-20 years ago [1].

All those bits and pieces are there for a reason. They're the product of days and months of CFD work in supercomputer clusters (F1 regulations actually limit the amount of FLOPS in the aero clusters!). Additionally, when there's a minor collision in the first lap, a few of those bits might go missing but not enough to warrant a front wing change. That means that the driver is impaired for the rest of the race, and none if it is conveyed to the viewer (unless Martin Brundle spots it and tells it to the viewers).

A few years back there was the "overtaking working group" (OVG) that looked into this and their verdict was that the rear wings need to be higher and front wings simpler and make the underbody create more downforce (ground effect, without skirts though). Unfortunately that's the opposite of what they've been doing for the past few years and it shows.

[0] [https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/...](https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/3612000/3612400/3612438/s8/f1-australian- gp-2015-nico-rosberg-mercedes-amg-f1-w06-front-wing.jpg) [1] [http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/1...](http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/12/upmp418.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> well of course, chassis and engines are heavily regulated, it's closer in excitement to those mono-maker racing and as distant as f1 as one of those. heck, first season was mono maker and last just had custom powertrains.

f1 used to be about the best maker, not the best driver. quite a philosophical difference there.

<comment><USER4> > f1 used to be about the best maker, not the best driver. quite a > philosophical difference there.

In terms of prize money, F1 still cares a lot about the constructor contest. It's not something fans are conscious of, necessarily. For example, sixth place in the constructor contest was decided on the last race, and there were three teams that could have taken it. It doesn't sound like much but it's worth twelve million dollars...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > the real problem ...<snip>... cars that cannot follow each other closely in > the turns

Can anybody speak to what the issue is preventing cars from following each other closely in the turns? Loosing "clean air" and aerodynamic downforce is my completely uneducated in F1 guess.

<comment><USER8> A lot of very knowledgeable people agree that it's the dominant role of the front wing in the modern cars. Compare a 2016 car [0] with a 1999 car [1].

The front wing is responsible for a lot of the downforce but loses too much of its efficiency when in turbulent air. The remedy would be moving the rear wings higher (more slipstream with the turbulent layer of air higher above the cars), simplifying the front wings (which increases drag in clean air) and making the car underbody provide more downforce. Unfortunately, that's not the direction the F1 regulations have been moving to.

[0] [https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/...](https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/3612000/3612400/3612438/s8/f1-australian- gp-2015-nico-rosberg-mercedes-amg-f1-w06-front-wing.jpg) [1] [http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/1...](http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/12/upmp418.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The following message is exactly why I finally gave up on F1:

"This video contains content from Formula One Management, who has blocked it..."

That is the message I got trying to watch the video embedded in the article.

The exclusivity and false sense of importance portrayed by F1 is just really lame, I feel like they go out of their way to make it hard to watch.

This coupled with the fact the actual racing has been boring and over regulated makes me glad I don't waste my time with F1 any more.

<comment><USER24> I feel you on the boring parts of F1. This, coupled with the idiotic halo they just have to put on the cars next year will mean that I spend my weekends a bit differently.

But, to the matter at hand, the vid only seems to be blocked when it is embedded on websites. I had a "watch this on youtube" link in the message and when I clicked there it took me to youtube.com and the vid started playing. Whatever the reasoning is to block embedded vids but not the vid altogether is beyond me. But then again, so is uglyfying the car with apendages that make it look like a flipflop...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of Sinulacra and Simulation

</comment><comment><USER26> Why do they drive off the track?

</comment><comment><USER27> yaaay for something that covers the winter stop :)

</comment><comment><USER28> MotoGP > F1

</comment><comment><USER29> I've been watching F1 for about 13 years and it's always the same after a boring race. No matter how exciting a couple of preceding races could have been, there's gonna be a shit storm. Too bad it's the last race of the season. Back in 2009 it was clear the track is rubbish.

E-sports? That's nice, but we've had sim racing for a long time. And F1 2017 is not even a simulator. It's made for the broad audience, who would play it on a PS4 with its controller, but not for hardcore sim racers.

Vandoorne competed in a serious rFactor F1 league and it's not like he was the fastest guy.

<comment><USER8> > Vandoorne competed in a serious rFactor F1 league and it's not like he was > the fastest guy.

Having had a royal ass-kicking delivered to me by Stoffel Vandoorne and Rubens Barichello in iRacing, I have to say that they might not be the fastest simracers out there but boy are they fast! I'm not a top-tier simracer by any means but these guys were at a whole different level.

Verstappen also used to do tons of simracing at top levels in the past. I wonder why they never mention that in the broadcast, because I think it's a major influence to him. Before he ever sat in a single seater car, he had had thousands of hours in a virtual one. His epic save in the rain at Interlagos 2016 was a classic simracer move. Anyone else would have braced for impact but he sat there as calmly as one can because he'd been there before in a sim, just waiting for the front wheels to bite and then let go of the brake at the right moment. You can't practice that in a real car because you don't end up in that kind of situations often enough and walk away from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> F1 2017 is not a simulator. It is a okay game, that lacks some love (presentation and menu is boring and lackluster). I fondly remember Grand Prix 1-4 games, that at least realistically represented everything going on in Formula 1 and had quite realistic physics, etc for their time. Unfortunately the last Codemasters game that were awesome and really polished were GRID 1 and DiRT 2. Now Codemasters owns the DriveClub devs, I hope we see a new polished game from them again.

<comment><USER8> Ironically, watching iRacing (arguably a very realistic simulator) Pro series with F1 cars has all the same problems as real F1 racing has. Not a lot of overtaking (a bit more than the real thing, though) and lots of subtle things that aren't visible to the casual observer.

Dirt Rally is a recent Codemasters game that is excellent, if you're into rallying. It's almost as good as Richard Burns Rally, and miles ahead of any other rally game/sim.

<comment><USER30> Formula 1 is okay. I am not sure if Liberty Media knows what treasure they bought, at the moment all their minor adjustments were only confusing. Sure, I wouldn't mind if they go back to V12 engines like in 1999. But the current season, and the last few years were fine. A lot better than the Schumacher and Vettel era, that was a boring time. Nowadays 3 teams have competitive cars, and three more teams (or so) drive for the podium and get there occasionally.

Dirt Rally is not for me, it's like Project Cars unrealistic hard while not be very realistic, in contrary to Grandprix Legends and Assetto Corsa. Dirt 3+4 with this Ken Block shit or random generated boring generic tracks - <USER2> thanks. DiRT 2 is still the best in presentation (it looks better in 4K on PC than DiRT Rally, see YouTube videos), DiRT 2 has a nice single campaign, a nice menu, great tracks in 8 different regions, a great physics engine and car deformation and so much more - I don't get why their newer games all are a lot less fun to drive and in general build together so lackluster. Maybe they should take a break for a year, not releasing yearly updates to F1, DiRT (and DiRT). A new DiRT 2 and a new GRID 1 and a new DriveClub would be awesome - <USER3> it.

<comment><USER8> > Dirt Rally is not for me ... unrealistic hard while not be very realistic

Dirt Rally is probably the most realistic _rally_ simulator out there, or at least second after Richard Burns Rally. There's nothing that's comparable to those two out there.

And it feels alright to me compared to my experience driving in low grip conditions on dirt, snow and ice (on traffic and doing drifting on empty lots). Also when watching replays it looks like real rally driving (most car games don't look at all like the real thing when watching replays).

But rallying is really friggin' difficult. Richard Burns Rally is probably even more difficult than Dirt Rally. It takes a while to get a hang of the loose surface and the lateral dampening from packing snow and dirt in front of the tyres.

But once you catch the drift (pun intended), it becomes nice and fluent. You need to flick the car in nice and early, get going sideways and then modulate the drift with throttle and brake. I really like the FWD and RWD cars in Dirt Rally, the 4WD's are not as intuitive as in RBR (but that might be because they don't model the 2000's era computer controlled center differentials).

The big difference to driving sims on tarmac is that you don't really spend a lot of time full throttle. Instead you accelerate to a decent speed and then modulate the throttle to compensate for changes in the track surface. Braking is also similar, to slow down you give very little brake pedal with lots of modulation and only go full brakes when doing left foot braking (right foot on throttle).

I can't speak about Dirt or F1 or WRC games because I haven't put much time into them. I'm more into simulation than racing games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> To be fair, a caratoid drip of pure Xanax is more exciting than watching flashes of advertising blast past you at carefully limited speeds.

<comment><USER32> Yah, totally, what are these idiots thinking? Let's just get rid of all forms of entertainment and hook everyone up to a line of Xanax.

<comment><USER31> I can't believe you actually took my comment to mean _that_ , which leaves your response as a truly bizarre one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The truth is, even in its real-world incarnation, this always was a pretty lame sport, and now in a climate-change context, it's even more lame. So it's actually great if the esport version takes over. Entirely. Auto racing is pathetic.

<comment><USER34> You're talking about F1, the sport that is showing you can smash lap records after downsizing from large V-10's to smaller V-6 hybrids? That F1?

<comment><USER35> The way you write it, it almost reads as if it comes as a revelation that smaller, turbocharged engines can compete with larger, naturally aspirated ones in terms of power output. How can that be: F1 cars already boasted much more powerful small turbo engines 30 years ago than what has since been fitted into them.

In any case, that lap records were beaten this year tells an altogether different story: the engines used don't matter that much for the lap times after a point. After all, they were running almost the same engines last year, a little development notwithstanding, and were much slower: what has changed, and what dominates the gains in lap times, is aerodynamics – which are severely restricted by the rules. That was also the case a dozen years ago when we had the similarly powerful, larger but lighter N/A V10 engines (no hybrid part to lug around back then), accompanied with a narrower track and grooved tyres to reduce the cornering speeds. Thus the comparison is moot: everything around the engine dominates the equation anyway, but that is hardly news.

<comment><USER34> No I think gains this year are dominated by tyres, but that's neither here nor there - my point is that painting F1 as this anti-climate-change group is odd. As others have pointed out F1 car emissions are ridiculously low on the list of causes of climate change, but my point is more that F1 has pushed efficiency and alternate technology at the expense of a lot of pushback from fans. Of the criticisms one can make of F1 in particular, it's a pretty silly one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to decide your hip startup name - <AUTHOR> http://www.copify.com/silly-agency-name-generator-game

<comment><USER2> Kull, is it only for media agencies?</comment>


To Turn The Crowd Into Venture Capitalists, FundersClub Raises $6M Seed Round - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/19/fundersclub-seed-round/

<comment><USER2> I don't think this will work well for investors. The best deals in Silicon Valley go to the best angels who generally don't need a website to be able to get in on the deal. There is no shortage of access to capital for proper companies in SV. The investors who put in small amounts of capital generally aren't going to see returns on investment because startups are just _too_ risky.

Look at CircleUp for what I believe is a better model -- crowd funded capital for semi-established consumer brands.

</comment><comment><USER3> Crowdfunding startups has always sounded to me like the best way to hide risk from retail investors seeking a quick buck since the invention of the mortgage backed security credit default swap.

<comment><USER4> Retail investors did not buy those. The closest they got was either a) houses backed by ARMs made economic by mortgage-backed securities or b) shares in the publicly traded megabanks which held billions of mortgage-backed securities.

<comment><USER3> Of course, you are correct. I'll have to modify my attempts at witticism in the future.

<comment><USER5> Crowdfunding startups are the mortgage backed security credit default swap's for the retail investor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone explain to me why you need to make 200k/year or have 1 Million in assets to participate in this when the minimum funding level is only 1k? I want to participate in this, but can't.

<comment><USER7> They've limited participation to so-called accredited investors (with minimum income or assets as defined by the SEC). There are non-trivial regulatory requirements that come with accepting money from unaccredited investors, so many (most?) startups do the same.

<comment><USER6> Basically, "Because it's an SEC regulation"

OK, then I understand why this company and other start ups follow this rule.

But not why the rule is in place in the first place. To me, it sounds extremely discriminatory that any government regulation would have a fixed income or asset level requirement.

<comment><USER8> This regulation exists for consumer protection. Prior to this regulation, people were conned out of their money by investing in companies that may have been a sham. This does imply that rich people are less prone to hucksters than the poor (or that it is more acceptable for them to lose their investments..) Recent legislation changes this so that anyone can invest up to a percentage of their annual income, while rich people are unbounded in the amount they can invest. Editorializing, I think this is a good compromise.

<comment><USER9> A liberal paraphrase might boil down to the old adage:

 _Don't make a bet you can't afford to lose_

Back in the day, people presumably "bet the farm" on XYZ shady investment. Since the farm was all they had, it was a bet they could not afford to lose. But obviously 9/10 startups fail to be great investments. So, as public policy, the Gov't didn't want 9/10 farmers to go bankrupt. a Rich guy will a $$$ minimum assets can still lose a "farm" and have something left (ie, diversification).

Becuase the rich guy can (in theory) have scope for more investments (experience) and/or to pay advisors (expertise), they are seperated out. Note that there are lot of unsophisticated rich people and/or investors in certain areas that have varying levels of sophistication (empirically). But with the privelege of wealth come the obligation to realize _caveat emptor_ , vis-a-vis public policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm incredibly skeptical of the weak term sheets that would come out of this process. It looks like the crowd gets dilutable stock with no option for next round priority investing. Best of luck on their success - I hope my initial take is wrong, because this would be exciting at scale.

</comment><comment><USER11> congrats to a great team and amazing execution! FundersClub isn't the first in the space, but it's definitely the first to gain so much traction in such little time. I hope they keep killing it!

</comment><comment><USER9> _FundersClub firmly believes it's legal because it never handles the money directly, instead raising money for a venture fund that funnels into a startup._

\-- Intersting. This sounds more like lead-gen.

</comment><comment><USER12> Massive, scary legal risk here. This won't last long.

<comment><USER13> I'm sure you have your reasons for thinking this, but having read Hacker News for 4-5 years now, whenever people start making claims of startup failure based on legal risks, for me that's now a pretty sure sign of a winner-in-the- making.

<comment><USER14> PayPal (banking laws), YouTube (copyright laws), Airbnb (hotel laws), Uber (taxi laws), Facebook (FTC privacy laws).

<comment><USER12> Those are nothing compared to SEC laws and IRS requirements. Run afoul of them, and prison is in the cards.

And PayPal didn't break any banking laws, only ran into parochial issues in some states.

And Uber is having trouble too, aren't they?

<comment><USER15> AirBnB does pretty well on an IRS-flouting (and similar state-level authorities) business model.

<comment><USER12> AirBnB doesn't have any IRS issues (at least not that I've heard of). Their problems stem from being an enabler within an industry that typically requires licensing... and doing so to rent properties for fewer than 30 days without permit (required in some areas). Yeah, the law seems preventative, but it's in place as a zoning issue to prevent a bed and breakfast from popping up in your mom's cul-de-sac.

AirBnB is a good idea, running up against zoning laws that are also (generally) good ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So much for dogfooding...</comment>


Why I Don't Hire Ex-Google Employees [2015] - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jerkyjew/why-i-don-t-hire-ex-google-employees-1748875b7e42 <comment><USER2> > Almost all of the people I have run across suffer severely from the Dunning- > Kruger effect

Sidenote: Is there a name for a phenomenon for people who are aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect to believe themselves to be immune to it? Like a meta- Dunning-Kruger effect?

</comment><comment><USER3>
      I want to like what he is saying, but he wears his bias on his sleeve like a badge. He really just seems to be complaining about one type of ex-Googler. Google was their first job, and then they moved on within 1-2 years. Not people who were there for 2+ years or worked other places first.

      He also seems to just straight up hate Google based on how he views their business model in a very negative light. They steal your information?

      He acts like he is getting his revenge for something Google did by not hiring their ex-employees. What goes Google care? They are likely ex for a reason. To look at his opinion from a more positive perspective you could just call them Google's rejects. But he takes it so much further than that.

     With his real point being about ones that are post their first job, he might as well be complaining about millennials. Then how Google hires the worst of the worst of them. I would guess Google also leans towards the more Ivy League, which increases the entitlement.

</comment><comment><USER4> Having worked with a few ex-google employees I can only agree. I don't think I'd have a ban, but for some reason they do seem entitled and have a superiority complex.

Interviewing there a few times I have definitely felt it as well, and that's what made me turn them down.

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems like an incredible generalization. While it could be true in a lot of cases, you are branding an entire group with a bunch of labels that probably doesn't cover everyone in that group.

<comment><USER6> Note that Google specifically hires heavily for "culture fit" or "Googliness". From my experience as well, I'd say Google hires people who think like Googlers, and ergo, Googlers tend to be pretty similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I couldn't help but mentally replace the word "Googlers" with "blacks" and find that it makes about as much sense. What if one of the developers he considers good were hired by Google? Would the latter then automatically be turned to junk?

<comment><USER8> It's an interesting counterpoint. Except his generalization is based on the actual behavior of whatever sample he's seen. I'll also note that Google hyperfocuses recruiting on specific types of people in a way that automatically excludes all kinds of talent and people based on superficial criteria. Your counterpoint works on them too. ;)

<comment><USER7> Sure, but how big can that sample have been? People who claim to be able to make absolute judgements for a whole population based on a few samples can be lumped in the same category, but Google interviewers don't say "I'll never hire an X person". The article, however, does say "I'll never hire a Googler".

<comment><USER8> "but Google interviewers don't say "I'll never hire an X person""

You sure? I thought originally you couldn't get your foot in the door unless you were willing to solve some specific puzzles that might be an insult to someone with great resume and references. Or that their interviewing process naturally filters out all kinds of people who mentally handle work in IT better than bogus interviews. That's definitely saying we won't hire X person but in an indirect way where the traits of that person aren't specified clearly. They just follow from the obstacles Google creates for them.

"The article, however, does say "I'll never hire a Googler"."

That is true. Unlike Google, it's direct, honest, and gives us what we need to evaluate it. I see that it goes too far in a number of criteria where some Google employees clearly don't fit into the category. It would be unfair discrimination. There is one I think is worth evaluating: will they stick with the company over the long haul? This is going down in general but startup and high-tech culture has huge risk of turnover for average company. A smart, experienced candidate focused on life/job stability is a much safer bet by default than a Googler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's old (2015).

It's an interesting point of view, but generalizing everything is always dangerous.

It will be nice if the OP removes the anonymity.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thank god someone finally said it.

<comment><USER10> So they are proud to make ads?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It really just sounds like the author has a vendetta against Google.

</comment><comment><USER12> Oct 28, 2015.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's old. Just found it randomly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Weird.</comment>