Ask HN: Getting Started Investing - <AUTHOR> I, like probably most of the people here, want to someday build a product and sell it. But, until I can come up with an idea I believe in I would like to invest in other people's ideas. I'm a well paid independent consultant and have $100-150K yearly profits that can be used for investments.
My problem is getting in touch with startups to invest in. Investing through AngelList, but I unfortunately do not (yet?) meet the requirements to become an accredited investor.
Is $100-150K yearly enough to get started? Do I have the "buy in" necessary to join a fund?
Any real life advice on how to get started would be greatly appreciated. I'm based in western Europe btw. <comment><USER2> Do you really want to invest in early stage, high risk ventures that have a low probability of return? Open a Vanguard or Fidelity account. Buy index funds. Invest regularly. In 10 - 15 years you'll have a small fortune.

<comment><USER3> > In 10 - 15 years you'll have a small fortune.

More specifically, if you invest $150k per year for 15 years and get a 7% return, you'll end up with right around $4 million.

<comment><USER4> What percentage of people, even in this industry, can afford to invest 150k a year?

<comment><USER2> 150k would be nice! Personally I was investing over 50K/year for 10+ years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do you want to invest, or to gamble?

At your level of available funds, investing in startups is gambling, because you can't spread your bets widely enough to hedge them and increase the likelihood that gains on one will make up for the losses or break-even on the rest.

If you want to _invest_ , I recommend index funds.

<comment><USER6> > If you want to invest, I recommend index funds.

This. I've gotten this question from family, and the answer's just pair VTI and BND at some ratio you're happy with (or buy a target date fund) and wait.

<comment> o-__-o Very weird time we are in right now. US Markets at all time high, stronk us economy, faltering global outlook, plus tariffs. Market may go to the moon, or it may collapse.

That ratio needs to be tweaked at least monthly maybe bimonthly through the rest of this year (lots of uncertainty coming up)

<comment><USER7> The times are always weird. You'll be perpetually waiting if you're waiting for stuff to get "normal". Absorbing the essential truth of this is part of the zen of indexing.

Nobody knows what outcome you'll get, but indexing is a solid process. That's all you can do - maximise the quality of your process. Anything else is noise.

<comment> o-__-o We're at all time highs, is the market going up or down? You have an increased risk here because the wrong decision can be decimating (short the market and it continues to rally, or buy the market and we've hit the top). Nope I would wait for a confirmation signal and act on that. Even long term investing, you should have an edge never invest and withdraw blindly.

<comment><USER7> Unless you are a PhD in finance working at one of a handful of the world's top money managers, I guarantee that what you confidently refer to as your "edge" is gonna end up poking you in the eye. Age and experience will teach you that if you let it.

<comment> o-__-o Or maybe age and experience has seen this before and went balls deep in ITM calls after the market washed out 100+ points. I mean if you reread what I said, it's spot on to what happened over the last few days

But keep thinking a paper giving you a title with some mixed case letters makes you a top money manager and that no one could have possibly avoided a 40% loss during 2008

Also an edge can simply be moving averages which has a proven backtest but there are a lot more analytical tools that exist today

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These days there is too much money and not enough places to put it. It's difficult as an unconnected angel to find decent opportunities. If you met the threshold to invest as an LP in a fund that would keep you diversified and the GPs would have access that you do not.

<comment><USER9> But there's clearly a lot of people who still seek funding but can't find it, so how does that mesh with the idea that "there's too much money and not enough places to put it"?

<comment><USER10> Because most people doing things are not worthy of investment (i.e. crappy ideas, bad execution, not ready for investment, etc)

<comment> o-__-o Again way too many barriers to entry. I just need $100k to prove my idea. These funds have billions. They won't lend 100k because it has a prototype app, a handful of interest, but no investor pitch? But they will give $1m to someone who can pitch a dream with no product?

Please come to me with $100k and I'll offer you simply a guaranteed 0% return (no loss on investment) so I can pad my bank account and make "real" investors interested because it makes us look like we can manage our money.

It's all smoke and mirrors and I wish I could get access to the same cheap money big corps get. $300k at 6, 7, or 10% interest is just robbery when public companies and home owners are walking away with 2-3% APRs

<comment><USER10> Lol dude, "just" $100k. Barriers to entry? Totally honest: I'm an investor and I wouldn't invest $100k in you with a mentality like that. We're all in this to make money.

What you need is to prove your idea. No one is going to put $100k (or $100 million for that matter) in an untested idea, unless you have a relationship with an investor. And investing is a relationship business.

If a friend whom I trust and I know is a talented chef comes to me with a restaurant idea, I'll consider investing. If a random person comes to me, there is <10% chance (unless his food is absolutely amazing in every regard) that I will consider investing.

I'm happy to invest in a good tech business. But most things that I see just aren't great businesses.

You're likely in the US, but many EU countries have investment entities (generally funded by EU funds) that "give out" loans at 3% APR. If you want it, you can get it done. But there are very few barriers to entry. A good idea in need of funding will find funding.

<comment><USER11> Might be a bit late but do you have some more info on these EU funds? I'm just a very technical guy but somewhere on the horizon there will be a point where our proto is matured enough we probably should seek some funding if we want to do something with it. Thanks.

<comment><USER10> I'm not up to date on the particulars for each country, but where are you based? Happy to help if I can.

<comment><USER11> I'm based in the Netherlands. After my post I went searching and found we have a "early phase funding" from the government.

[https://www.rvo.nl/subsidies- regelingen/vroegefasefinancieri...](https://www.rvo.nl/subsidies- regelingen/vroegefasefinanciering-vff)

<comment><USER10> Also this [https://www.rvo.nl/subsidies- regelingen/groeifaciliteit](https://www.rvo.nl/subsidies- regelingen/groeifaciliteit)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for helping! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Martin Shkreli said $100k is not enough money to start investing, you can't do anything with such a low amount. The reason for that is because investing is competitive, you have to make smart decisions. To make smart decisions you have to spend a lot of time and effort evaluating companies you want to invest in. If you actually spend this time and effort, you won't have enough time for anything else. With your $100k you will be happy to make 10% in one year, so it's $10k per year full time.

You need millions of dollars, then it starts being worth it. You should listen to Martin Shkreli, even though he is in prison for fraud, because he knows more about investing than almost anybody here on HN. Most people on HN will not be able to record 1 hour video talking about investing, let alone 35+ of them. They don't have the stamina and knowledge. They also don't have the results to back up their advice, unlike Martin Shkreli.

It seems foolish to think that you can spend just a few hours per week and think you're going to beat the market.

I don't want to insult anyone, I myself don't know much about investing. The reason why I mention Martin here is because his videos on youtube are very accessible for layman people who are uninformed about the market.

</comment><comment><USER13> This book by Jason Calacanis is actually pretty good for beginning angel investors. Worth the read. [https://www.angelthebook.com/](https://www.angelthebook.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Have you considered getting your start by investing in micro cap tech stocks?

The transaction is much easier. You get all the risk of total wipe out you may crave. But most importantly you get a lot more information and that might help you get practice.

The most valuable practice is when you think a company has a great strategy and is a no brainer and it shuts down. Or when you do a lot of work and invest in a rocket ship only to notice that Facebook would have been a better investment.

<comment><USER2> Do you want him to lose every dollar? Most penny stocks are garbage. Generally low volume, occasional pump-and-dump scams, fake news from paid stock promoters, etc.

<comment><USER14> So you're saying it great practice! Do a study on the survival rate of the average AngelList offer.

I didn't say penny stocks. You can try names you know and like: SMAR, SSTI, PS, etc

<comment><USER2> You did say micro cap though. The ones you list are really small caps...

<comment><USER14> You're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you're committed to investing in startups (as opposed to index funds/real estate), I'd recommend checking out AngeList's spinoff [https://republic.co/](https://republic.co/)

Their startups raise crowdfunded equity rounds that you can invest in for smaller amounts without meeting the requirements for being an accredited investor.

<comment><USER16> looks similar to seedrs [http://seedrs.com](http://seedrs.com) (which was used by revolut to get investment AFAIK)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Have you considered other types of investment that are more liquid, like stocks, bonds, commodities, or real estate?

If so, did you gain experience with them? Why or why not?

</comment><comment><USER18> Find the startup places: conferences, meetups, etc. Be somewhat discreet about saying you have money to invest, that's a good way to get scammed. Basically you need to social-network the hell out of the place so you can get good startups to come to you. You may also need to provide some additional benefit to startups - domain knowledge or contacts about something of value to them.

Eventually you will find the other angel investors in your area, and collaborate with them.

$100k is probably enough to build a small software product, especially if you can find a tech co-founder who is putting in sweat equity. The process of doing this will teach you a lot even if you never make back the $100k.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can you? Yes. But it's going to be like taking a second job, because sourcing good deals is hard and a lot of work.

If you want to deploy a few 100k, your best bet would be to invest directly into a private fund -- if you can find one that is in need of capital. One fund manager I know with a small 50m fund takes tickets starting at 100k when fundraising, for example. So X00k should be sufficient to buy in.

Which country btw? Some countries offer tax advantages to investors as well, depending on how you invest.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you're in Western Europe, why does that weird USA regulation about "accredited investor" matter to you?

I run a Dutch startup. As far as I know, all our (also Dutch) angel investors did was:

        * Sign papers
        * Transfer money

So unless I'm missing something, and if you're serious about doing high risk investing, it's just ("just") a matter of finding good startups that are looking for money.

</comment><comment><USER7> The objectively best advice you can get is to buy index funds - either ETFs or through a Vanguard account. This will give you the highest probability of a favourable outcome over the long term.

Unfortunately people also find this advice to be too boring and therefore usually ignore it. I expect that's what you'll do, too - no offence intended.

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER20> If you are in the U.S., wait until you become accredited and have enough excess cash that you can do this part time.

Otherwise, make this your full time job and make sure you have enough income to wait 8-10 years before you start seeing return.

You can also invest in a first time fund, where the manager will charge 2% management fee and 20% carry (success fee).

Getting access to entrepreneurs depends on your geography but generally if you make yourself useful to entrepreneurs, with or without investing, you can start generating dealflow.

Start with small checks, you will mess up in the beginning, so make these mistakes less painful.

Read venture deals and watch all the videos from YC investor school.

<comment><USER21> Startup Investor School links for the curious:

\- Videos: [https://investor.startupschool.org/](https://investor.startupschool.org/)

\- Blog post: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/startup-investor- school/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/startup-investor-school/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As others have stated, you really likely shouldn't be investing in early-stage startups at your level of capital.

Read all of the content available on /r/financialadvice /r/investing and /r/financialindependence

</comment><comment><USER23> You can't start investing in start-ups and expect to hit the good ones without excellent access and knowledge. You will almost certainly lose all your money.

Invest in the S&P 500 using an index fund, that's it. Investing in the S&P 500 is another way of investing in "the world's economy", and that will, hopefully, go up over time. And if it goes down, then at least you're not the only one who lost money so your money will be worth as much as it used to anyways.

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://www.seedinvest.com](https://www.seedinvest.com) is really good for this. They are the best at vetting companies and only allow a small amount (something like 3 out of 1,000) companies that apply raise funds through the Reg A (and other various regulations passed in the JOBS Act) exemption and I believe these are now available to accredited and non-accredited investors in some form.

</comment><comment><USER25> That's enough to start Angel investing in in the UK at least. My first round clip size is about 25k and I keep some back for the invetible future funding rounds. Being doing this for around 4 years and looking at my first exit next week (about 2.5x net). Learnt so much aside from any money I might make and my contacts list has exploded. Reach out if your UK based and want some some tips.

<comment><USER26> Hey, not OP but I'm interested (London based). What's the best way to reach out?

<comment><USER25> email addy on my hacker news profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What are your goals for your investing? What does it help you do in your life in 5 years, 10 years, etc.

Usually these answers won't fit in ski well with startups as an asset class.

Also you're right. Startup investing is all about deal flow.

</comment><comment><USER28> Do you see yourself ever needing some of that money in a short period of time e.g. 2-4 weeks? As you move away from listed equities to alternative assets access to that money moves from days to a decade.

</comment><comment><USER29> As another person based in Western Europe who would want to start investing, I would also like to ask for good resources. Particularly for a long-term outlook.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you want to someday build a product, save your capital and use it to seed your future company. In the meantime, put it in US Treasuries or munis.

</comment><comment><USER31> Also western Europe. If you've got no clue, index funds is pretty much the way to go.

Otherwise read. A lot. BEFORE making decisions.

</comment><comment><USER32> Early to the game myself but my sense is that starting with syndicates for the first ~10 investments is the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER33> If you would like to discuss investing feel free to contact me through Reddit, /U/Jj_leahy.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why not going to a hedge fund?

<comment><USER28> doubt anyone would accept such a small amount.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I unironically suggest cryptocurrencies.

<comment><USER36> Contrary to the stock market, Bitcoin _is_ a zero sum game.

<comment><USER9> Could you expand on that please?

<comment><USER6> First, there's no intrinsic value. If a healthy company's share price drops to zero, I'll buy up as much as I can, making a profit on just its cash reserves. Bitcoin isn't "healthy" (or unhealthy); it doesn't hold assets; it _is_ the asset.

Second, companies (hopefully) generate value and return it in buybacks or dividends.

It goes a little bit beyond your question, but Bitcoin on its own doesn't create value in the same way a company does. Investing in Bitcoin is much more like buying Turkish Lira.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The best startup to invest in is Bitcoin

<comment><USER38> Just double check your offsite backup strategy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> BitCoin wants to replace Aws [https://twitter.com/_unwriter](https://twitter.com/_unwriter) if you are interested</comment>


WhatsApp Web - <AUTHOR> https://web.whatsapp.com/

<comment><USER2> really? This is not newsworthy at all.</comment>


Google sued for allegedly discriminating against conservative white men - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/8/16863342/james-damore-google-lawsuit-diversity-memo <comment><USER2> > "James Damore was fired as an engineer after the manifesto, which [...] > suggested women may be biologically inferior engineers"

Nowhere in the essay suggests that at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> Haha, nice</comment>


A Simple Request: VLC.js - <AUTHOR> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5084 <comment><USER2> As the lead of the team of VLC, we've been discussing this since quite a bit of time, and we believe it is totally doable.

But, we believe we need WebAssembly + Wasm-Threads. Without threads it will be a very difficult task to port VLC: you notably need one thread for input, one for audio output, one for video output, and one for the playlist.

However, threads are supposed to come in an update to WebAssembly. So that will be cool.

Also, VLC is very very heavily modularized, and Wasm will bring modules.

Finally, porting all codecs will be hard (FFmpeg), but VLC has some very simple modules for a few codecs, like theora and mpeg2, so it is easy to start and port one module after another...

<comment><USER3> Something that has always bugged me about VLC... The Traffic Cone icon. Whereas it's was a brilliant piece of imagery to separate VLC from other 3rd party players, nowadays that market place is way less competitive, so maybe now is the time to switch up the icon to something more formal?

I've started seeing VLC included on work-orientated desktop builds and the Cone icon sticks out like a sore thumb, and most lay-users have no idea what VLC is so assume it's a system utility (based on the icon).

Maybe a combo of a Video Player icon, with a smaller traffic cone on the side... ?

<comment><USER2> Submit a new icon.

But so far, it's very distinctive, so it will stay like that, until a better icon is submitted.

<comment><USER3> Brilliant assumption that I have the skills. Ok, I'll have a go...

[http://imgur.com/tvXmCvr](http://imgur.com/tvXmCvr)

What do you think ? :)

<comment><USER4> woa. i know its a joke drawing, but the cone you made looks like a wizards hat! maybe the next icon should be an awesome orange striped wizard hat. for the end users, vlc plays all videos, _magically_ ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > It is my belief that a Javascript (later WebAssembly) port of VLC, the > VideoLan Player, will fundamentally change our relationship to a mass of > materials and files out there, ones which are played, viewed, or accessed. > Just like we had a lot of software locked away in static formats that > required extensive steps to even view or understand, so too do we have > formats beyond the "usual" that are also frozen into a multi-step process. > Making these instantaneously function in the browser, all browsers, would be > a revolution.

Something like VLC.js is anything but "[a] [s]imple [r]equest" :)

The web experiences some kind of rot anyway. As long as you can still access and play stuff you really want in at least one way (VLC), is the instantaneous part such a win?

It's a technical solution to a problem most people don't face. Are people really facing that many multi-media files that can't be played? Two bigger issues that come to mind: 1) stuff hosted on closed, proprietary sites that then close down 2) how to find stuff (especially with esoteric or unusual content). So IMO, VLC.js probably wouldn't "fundamentally change our relationship to a mass of materials and files out there".

I agree there is a delivery issue, but again I think it's findability and hosting - hence why youtube/soundcloud/spotify/netflix is a thing.

<comment><USER6> It's true, I've experienced this first hand as I've tried to build my own simple "Netflix" which hosts my media collection and makes it available to all my devices. And as it turns out the intersection of maximum usability vs compatibility is a simple Apache open directory of files.

The only issues I've faced with this setup is one of codec availability and bitrate:

Sometimes, I'll be in a situation where I only have a high-quality, high bitrate copy of some media on my server, and I'll be trying to access it over a low bandwidth connection. If I'm stuck in one place for a while, I can re- encode the media on the server, but I'm unable to begin streaming to my device until the new lower bitrate copy is finished encoding on the server side.

Other times, I'll be in a situation where I want to access a file, but I need it in a different codec, so again I'll have to re-encode it on the server and download once that's finished.

What would be amazing, and would solve both problems (I'm not sure this is possible) is some kind of real time, http-based transcoding proxy. So you give it a link to a media file somewhere on the web, and it returns an http link which is streamed and transcoded in real time and served back to the client, all over http (so existing http media streaming clients can use this as a drop in replacement).

If such a thing existed (or exists) I'll donate $100 right now.

<comment><USER7> Check out Plex - [https://www.plex.tv/](https://www.plex.tv/)

I run it on an Nvidia Shield, it will transcode multiple streams on that and handles pretty much everything I've thrown at it so far.

<comment><USER6> I've used Plex before, and while it is fancy and has a nice user experience for it's use cases, I've found it somewhat limited.

It is fundamentally locked into itself. You need to either have a device which can run the web client, or a Plex app for the platform. And that works fine if you're doing this just for yourself (I've run a Plex server in the past).

But sharing media is painful (or at least, more painful than simply sending a link to someone), and the overhead of compatibility was always annoying. Additionally, if you don't like the way the Plex app works on your device, tough, that's the only UI there is. However, there are a tremendous number of apps and applications with UIs galore that all support HTTP streaming.

Now, the last time I fully investigated Plex was about a year ago, but since then I've used friends instances and it always seemed lackluster, or at least not as straightforward as bare-bones HTTP streaming.

<comment><USER8> On the other end of the flexibility + compatibility scale, if all you need is to watch The Wire on your iPhone/iPad/Apple TV v4 on the couch instead of at your computer, I've been using Infuse. Just turn on SMB on your computer and fave a few directories, then stream away. It'll even pull in metadata, cover art, descriptions and sort shows into seasons.

[https://firecore.com/infuse](https://firecore.com/infuse)

(Arguably, Infuse is very compatible with whatever your video source is, but it only runs on iOS.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This sounds like a very different goal than the port of MAME.

MAME is emulating video games, a video game is a piece of software that cannot be easily converted into something web-playable. Therefore in order to make the games accessible you need an emulator.

VLC is a media player. It supports more formats than a web browser, but audio and video files can be converted. If you have a file in an arcane, outdated video or audio format and you want to make it more easily accessible just convert it to something that is playable in a browser.

I'm not saying that a web vlc has no value. Conversion always means some quality loss. There are some interactive features (like dvd menus) that are essentially like software and having access to them in a browser isn't simply possible by conversion. But it has certainly much less value than a web mame.

<comment><USER10> > VLC is a media player. It supports more formats than a web browser, but > audio and video files can be converted. If you have a file in an arcane, > outdated video or audio format and you want to make it more easily > accessible just convert it to something that is playable in a browser.

This is what the Internet Archive does right now. Unfortunately, transcoding from one lossy format to another just results in more quality loss. Something like VLC.js would sidestep that problem, and remove the need to transcode everything (and keep multiple copies!) as a bonus. You even mention that yourself, so I'm not sure I understand your point here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure I like this idea. This means even less control over my media files. Not only do they get streamed, but also the software that views them. I'm very likely not going to be able to use this offline, or outside of the browser in other apps. It's likely going to be slower, unless someone adds one-off extensions to JS to allow access to hardware decoding.

What would I suggest otherwise? Don't laugh, but something like NPAPI or ActiveX (COM). We had all these great component models in the 2000s. We could put them in a lightweight VM or a container for security. Instead of creating a window, we could let them directly draw to a shared-memory texture, which would solve some usability problems. I believe we could solve all problems that these technologies had nowadays.

Fundamentally, something like this belongs into the OS, not the browser (or any application). You should be able to use every codec and widget from other applications. We had that around 2000 with COM and VB6: Drag the media player widget from a pallette, drop it on your form, write a line of code to load a video.

Also, nobody gets to decide what codecs you are allowed to use or not for "political" or strategic reasons. Can't play something exotic? Just download the best-rated codec from your OSes app store (remember, which would run in a sandbox). Creating content and want to make sure everybody can see it without installing? Do what you do already today, and use the greatest common codec shipped will all OSes.

<comment><USER12> You put a lot of faith in sandboxes... They aren't magic.

<comment><USER11> Neither is a browser runtime. I would even say running code in a browser could be more dangerous, because you have a huge complexity (HTML+JS+Network Stack+3D Engine+kichen sink in modern browsers) and thus a large attack surface. Whereas if you built an isolation layer around a OS process (or bytecode), you can restrict the code to do only what it has to (render to audio and video buffers), and you have to audit the wrapper (sandbox/VM/runtime), which is much smaller than the whole browser.

The reason browsers are relatively safe now is that so many brilliant people are working really hard on them, not because they are inherently safe.

<comment><USER12> This is an interesting perspective that I had not considered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That would be great. It can deal a final blow to Apple's refusal to support free codecs in their browsers.

At last it will be possible to save space and encode only in high quality free codecs, using vlc.js as a fallback for crippled Apple systems.

<comment><USER14> This, a thousand times. The mess that is Plex sucks, a web browser tool which could play media files without all the drama would be a game changer for those of us who don't consume media through iTunes.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, Plex is the worst.

<comment><USER16> What are you talking about? I have zero pain points with the thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm filled with equal parts:

      - That will be *awesome*! Think of all the cool things
        we can do with this!
      - Oh no, we're going to be parsing video formats in
        JavaScript. :(
      - Hmm, I wonder if this will actually be better for
        security compared to a VLC browser plugin?

I guess we're not far from JavaScript: the one true language.

<comment><USER18> no need for Javascript with Web Assembly.

<comment><USER19> It's still not clear whether this is actually true or whether we'll just be writing javascript from C. It really depends on the quality of APIs available.

<comment><USER20> My impression of web assembly was that browsers would go "oh that looks like web assembly" and then bypass JavaScript and compile the whole thing to native code?

<comment><USER19> Yea, it depends on the quality of APIs available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm curious what features of VLC they're looking for that aren't provided by HTML5's video support. Broader codec support?

<comment><USER22> HTML5 can't play MKVs let alone codecs other than H.264+AAC in mp4. It's support is so laughable it's sad.

<comment><USER23> The root cause is/and continues to be that we want HTTP to be an application protocol, which it was never intended to be or designed to be. I feel that until browsers behave more like independent operating systems / vms, this kind of tension between what we want to do and what we can do will always exists on the web as we know it...

I mean, Canvas, WebGL, Audio APIs, Video APIs, VR APIs, etc, when do we realize that what we want is a way to run applications...

<comment><USER24> _The root cause is /and continues to be that we want HTTP to be an application protocol,_

I don't see what relevance that has to HTML5 video codec support. Browsers could pretty easily support arbitrary codecs.

<comment><USER25> You are right that certainly one could lets say edit the source of chrome and add support. There is no technical limitation here, however see [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Supported_...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Supported_media_formats)

Specifically, one thing they mention is licensing with regard to browsers.

Parent's comment has relevance IMO because we're trying to shoe horn things to make everything work in the browser and thus via HTTP as if the browser was an operating system. The browser was built to browse web pages, and at that, didn't even necessarily need to be graphical (see lynx). It's becoming a monster and many of us don't agree with the hand-waiving style justification of adding more and more.

Once upon a time, some people had a vision of using something optimized for files for files, another thing for chat optimized for chat, and so on. There were protocols for these, and apps on top of those. Not all these things were built well, efficient, and/or easy to use. The browser and http were good compromises in many ways, but certainly not without massive problems either. Fast forward and we've just compounded the problems and we keep working harder to lock ourselves into another limited set of technologies we already knew had fundamental issues (people used to/still do complain about processor architecture in similar ways).

I like the browser as a unifying, networked experience, but HTTP + the web browser are not really designed particularly well for some of the things we try to use them for from many perspectives. On top of that, with the issues of JavaScript, security, state, and other things, it gets even more messy. Somewhere along the way we seem to have become disinterested in protocols, lower-level networking, and generally challenging the norms.

Ironic that a lot of web developers preach things like KISS, and yet the browser is a huge example of a project where one could argue that KISS + don't throw in the kitchen sink has run amok. I understand this is not a popular opinion with some people, but I still think it is a valid one. Sometimes I think a little more pausing and thinking things through on lower-levels and with regard to the bigger picture are undervalued and could save us from some of the nonsense of the last few decades.

<comment><USER26> But before that, they used a VDT - as in like a VT100, 3270 or 5250 terminal. Everything is full circle - the web browser is just being treated as an intelligent terminal now.

<comment><USER25> I agree conceptually, but this points out some fun things.

So in other words, we tried that and failed in many ways in a much simpler domain. Now we are trying it again with a much bigger, more complicated scope and set of technical issues. Just like in the VTxxx days, people say something is compatible, and yet it is not 100%. Just like in those days, we deal with the craziness around all that as developers.

I've been working on some stuff dealing with old formats, including VT100. Diving into the source of some very big and well-known projects along with many lesser known things, it's amazing how wrong many implementations are when you check the standards. Related, I've seen the craziest implementations of telnet servers, ANSI SGR codes, and more. Translation: I have 0 faith in humanity to implement standards to the standards. I have less faith in the standards people to create sane standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This would definitely be cool, but I'd be worried about using this because of mobile devices. It can't be good for battery life to be processing video through JavaScript. I know ios and many android devices have hardware assisted h.264 decoding that's very efficient to make video playback work well with great battery life.

</comment><comment><USER28> There's already a VLC web plugin, how would VLC.js be any different for the end user?

[https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:WebPlugin/](https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:WebPlugin/)

<comment><USER29> I believe NPAPI is being deprecated; that wiki page is very out of date.

<comment><USER30> Neither Chrome nor Edge support NPAPI plugins today. Firefox is dropping support for all NPAPI plugins (other than Flash) in Firefox 52 (March 2017).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Question: does VLC handle much more formats than ffmpeg? I imagine the latter would be much simpler to compile (so that it'd convert Any Format™ to Some Common Modern Format Supported By All Browsers™)

<comment><USER2> There is a lot more than just codecs and formats in a media player. :D

Also, porting ffmpeg might be hard, while VLC has some simpler codecs to port for a start (libmpeg2 for example).

<comment><USER15> Yes but isn't FFMpeg where the real value is ? VLC itself is a bit of a mess, the UI is clunky and and isn't a great media player experience.

Would seem like the best of both worlds to use the web for UI but have FFMpeg deliver the frames.

<comment><USER32> I tend to agree with you on this, personally. I can't speak to the code quality or whether or not VLC is a mess (I've never really looked) but I think the point here is the ability to play back (almost) any video/audio/subtitle format around which is met by both VLC and FFMPEG quite well. Being able to do that in a browser, without plug-ins, in a performant manner is important from an archival perspective (broadest audience support for the broadest array of file kinds/types).

Unfortunately, the ultimate goal -- taking the control of "what codecs are supported for streaming" away from the browser vendors probably won't be met. The biggest issue there is supporting reliable playback across a variety of processors with performance/battery constraints. For desktop users it might be a doable thing, but unlikely for mobile. Granted, we're doing things on our mobile devices that would have been positively unimaginable 7 years ago, so who knows?

At the end of the day, though, it's codec support that is the big win from my perspective -- lavc/lavf or FFMPEG -- not necessarily getting all of VLC ported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> On a side note, Webchimera [1] works great from Electron/nw.js applications. I use it for some media applications.

[1] [http://www.webchimera.org/](http://www.webchimera.org/)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm currently putting what little few hours I have into a few side projects that touch things like XM/MOD and other things like ANSI, RIP, etc. I always seem to share Jason's nostalgia and I get his meaning, but I often don't see eye to eye with him on a lot, whether his treatment of BBSs or some things like emulation.

There are so many red flags here, from licensing to browser vendors to JavaScript to threading to security, I don't know where to begin. It's not that these things aren't doable (even stupid hacks like transcoding are readily doable), it is just that I do not agree with the notion that this must be in the browser for the sake of digital preservation or some sort of user experience.

I know this is a very unpopular opinion in some parts (perhaps HN), but why must everything be in JavaScript and in the web browser? I understand we want things to be cross-platform and network accessible, but I must say that the drift from native to the browser is becoming increasingly disheartening and inspiring constant wtf moments. I get that a lot of people use the web and some people even see it as the computer itself now, but we rarely pause to ask if this is a good thing. Moreover, we invest a lot of time and effort in things that aren't really worth it in the end. I wish in computer science there were more sanity checks and willingness to make progress, rather than to paint flat tires or more crudely, shine turds. The term sunk costs comes to mind.

I like the web and the browser as much as the next person for browsing web pages, but it is not an operating system. Stop making it do everything and anything; that's why I bought a computer not a web browser machine (yeah, I know chromeos). I did not buy my computer so I could stab a few of its cores in the face or make it feel like it is running several orders of magnitude under-clocked. I feel like this is what my browser is doing to me when I see <insert latest abuse> or visit a page displaying a few poorly aligned paragraphs of text resulting in more RAM usage than total RAM I had in my computer for several decades.

What are the benefits and do they really outweigh the costs? I understand that building binaries is full of issues, as is compilation, processor architecture, and so many other parts of the native experience. But the thing is we spend so much time on maintaining and improving our already dated and flawed OSs that at least generally run fast and sanely.

Why would we want to shoehorn yet more things we already do happily in our OS into the browser? Why move something from efficient environments to inefficient ones? Why have to lobby or wait on a standards committee to allow something? Why wait on browser vendors to agree or disagree to make it more complicated? Why am I trading taskbars, terminal sessions, or other OS constructs for browser tabs (can we have new or other ways to mix content types)? How is the browser better as a unifying experience than my OS? Do I really even want videos on web pages or do I want something that is built better for video content? Why not just use what's inside my computer, like that expensive GPU, CPU, RAM, etc. without some ridiculous workarounds or barriers? These are all just random topics to think about, however the point is that it has to be more than, "Wow, that was cool but stupid" moments or "it's in the browser."

We already have put herculean efforts into making safe, pleasant, efficient, cross-platform languages. There are many successes and failures, and the jury is almost universally still out. But the barriers there are much smaller and the environments much more sane. In light of the move to multi-core architectures and bumping up against x86 limitations/physics, and eventually the same for others, it seems insane to me to throw away what we do have right now and relegate it to some browser environment that often struggles to things I can easily do faster/smoother over a terminal session.

I feel with every new "XYZ, but in the browser" we are taking a step away from both the Internet and the general utility of the computer and stomping on what remains. Instead, if we want experiences that must use the Internet, I would like to see more lower-level things implemented. I want to see the next browser, the next usenet, something new that can be built-on and other higher- level things for the every day user. One day it is mobile apps, the next day browser apps, and so on. Let's forget what is trendy or fun and get back to being creative and making progress, leaving the rest to fun "because" side- projects.

Finally, getting back to what Jason and/or archive does specifically, how does this help preservation? It seems to me that browser vendors and browsers in general don't have the best track record in general here and are an added layer of complication vs. <insert OS/programming language/VM/runtime/shim/emulator>. We've also seen any kind of ancillary/hosted/browser-native solution come and go, whether it was applets, flash, activex, whatever. I wish the browser were better with video, but VLC is not what would make it better, just designing and allowing the proper support from the ground-up would be the right way, and at worst, requires the help of the committees and the vendors. I do love VLC.

<comment><USER34> _..., but why must everything be in JavaScript and in the web browser?_

In this case, the point is to make that archived data readily accessible. An internet archive where you need to track down and install the right native application to view each record is a bit like those rarefied museum collections locked away in the vast basements of large academic departments, accessible only to those few scholars who are familiar with the hoops they need to jump through to be allowed in.

I don't think the idea is that if you had, say, a large collection of MOD files you enjoy, that you should throw away your native tracker and use the browser with a JS tracker instead. Rather, the idea is that if there's a discussion somewhere of the early 90s Amiga demoscene you can post a link to a particular MOD file and know that everyone will be able to play it straight from there.

<comment><USER35> Agreed. An archive where the data is preserved but you have to really work to view things is good, but one where you can just browse is better. Since we don't have to worry about accidental damage caused by people who are just browsing, and people who are just browsing don't limit the ability of a researcher to use other tools, we can both.

Another good example is MIDI. As a browser of MIDI files I just want to hear them play. If I'm researching them, then I'll want to take the time to figure out what hardware and software synthesizers people were actually using when they composed them and listened to them.

Neither use-case impinges on the other, so there's no reason at all to avoid implementing an in-browser MIDI player. Or an in-browser media player that can play nearly everything, in this case.

On the other hand, downloading a 4gb dvd image full of mpeg2 streams is pretty wasteful of bandwidth; if it weren't for the menus and whatnot it'd be better to transcode it to something modern for playback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yeah, simple.

</comment><comment><USER37> mame as javascript only worked because distribution of mame is garbage.

go ahead. dont belive me? go on and try to install it now. you will waste days just trying to figure out where you can find some version and then how to hook up that nice frontend you saw on some video demo of a rare mame setup mame.

what they did was excellent. because the alternative was messy.

vlc is already available in a very nice package everywhere. Insead of that futile effort, just convince everyone to just publish the media file and maybe subtitles, in a stardard way, instead of in a proprietary flash-player replacement or proprietary stream app. Your browser will already send it to vlc just fine.</comment>


Is it reasonable to expect overtime from unpaid interns? - <AUTHOR> https://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/92965/71677 <comment><USER2> The first question is to ask what does it cost to train someone? There are always costs to having someone on site. If the return on investment in the training program covers the cost of the training, one has a case for saying the arrangement is fair.

On the other hand, if the compensation vastly outweighs what it costs to train, then we have a case that this is just greed on the part of the training organisation.

In the case highlighted above, one would say that he is not getting trained at all but is simply being used as free labour. In which case, one would be justified in highlighting the nature of the company anonymously to all and sundry. One is also justified in leaving the company graciously publicly so as to not hinder one's future.

Using the Streisand Effect can be an effective tool in improving the general behaviour of all.

</comment><comment><USER3> _" I am a unpaid intern at a tech company and several weeks ago I had my first performance evaluation. While my manager told me that the code I had been submitting was excellent and that my work was more than solid, they noted that I had been leaving too early from work and that this called my dedication into question.

Now, our official start and ends times are from 9:30 to 6:00 so everyday for the past several weeks I have been working hard to finish my days tasks and then leaving at 6:00. When I asked why this was a problem the response I received was that I should always be looking for more work."_

The manager was almost right, that intern _should_ be looking for work - someplace else.

</comment><comment><USER3> The US department of labor has rules for unpaid interns. If the intern was in the US, it would seem like his employer was acting illegally.

 _" 4\. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded."_

</comment><comment><USER4> Well that's depressing.</comment>


Trump's big league microphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14384774/trump-microphone-speech-long-neck-shure-sm57 <comment><USER2> A whole piece about what microphone he chose to use? This is beyond petty.

Media not doing themselves any favors here.</comment>


Boring Jobs Dull the Mind - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/boring_jobs_dul.html

<comment><USER2> Why can't we at least do two tasks at the same time? It would be great to do the dayjob on autopilot and meanwhile think about greater things.

Recently I read about Feynman's counting experiment, so I wonder if maybe it is doable to some extent.</comment>


Do You Really Need More Facebook Likes? The Data Driven Answer - <AUTHOR> https://blog.kissmetrics.com/facebook-likes-data-driven-answer/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing the article - and I totally agree. Facebook "likes" give you some element of exposure (at least in terms of getting your name out there), but it does little to nothing for active user engagement.

Facebook just seems like a very impersonable way to market your business; there really isn't a way to drill down to focus groups, it's just one big mass of users.</comment>


How I made $12,000 with an ebook in 24 hours - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lessmilk.com/ebook-sales/ <comment><USER2> Nice article, but I would of liked to see how you did the marketing for your book, your article didn't really dive into that?

I like your idea on pricing, smart move and it obviously paid off.

Did you use your blog to 'push' your book sales? Did you run a Google Adwords campaign? Ask friends to help you sell it etc?</comment>


Give me a hint: How are programming languages related to problem domains? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jonasbandi.net/2009/01/give-me-hint-how-are-programming.html Can anybody give me a hint how (general) programming languages and problem domains are related? <comment><USER2> It's all about the concepts which the language bases itself on and the way that people think about problems.

I think the easiest way to see this is a (somewhat contrived) example. Imagine there are two languages, which run equally efficiently for equivalent problem specifications. The first one is basically just C; its conceptual model matches the way the hardware it runs on fairly closely. The second is something like Haskell; most of its concepts come from mathematics and formal computer science, and as such it places fairly strong restrictions on what you can and cannot do.

Both of these would be capable of calculating whatever you wanted (assuming they're both Turing-complete), but the C-like language would be better suited for tasks that require knowledge of the hardware (systems programming) while the Haskell-like language would be better suited for mathematical/theoretical type programs. (The difference between two C-like languages would be negligible, assuming equivalent libraries and efficiency.)

Both would work for other things, of course, but they may not be as nice to use.</comment>


The Truth We Won't Admit: Drinking Is Healthy - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/truth-wont-admit-drinking-healthy-87891/

<comment><USER2> The statement of the year:

 _The more alcohol a society consumes, the fewer alcohol-related problems and alcohol-related deaths (including cirrhosis) it has, since these societies, such as those in Southern Europe, integrate drinking with social life. And alcohol conveys health benefits._

Because sober, not drunk people cause problems to others, and alcohol apparently doesn't have any bad effect on health. //sarcasm

\---

Alcohol is among the largest preventable causes of deaths, and is connected to half of all violent crimes.

<comment><USER3> This article is stupid and correlates drinking with health. It does not in any way go to test the theory that "relaxation" time is critical, combined with socialization.

Alcohol is one of those drugs who's withdrawal CAN KILL YOU ALL ON IT'S OWN! In fact if you are 60 and an alcoholic, you will most likely die if you stop drinking from withdrawal alone.

There are easily substitute drugs which won't be as intense but still establish similar social benefits (weed is one of those). And Weed doesn't kill you from withdrawal.

Going further, let's take the Center for Disease Control's look at things: in 2010, ALCOHOL-impaired driving accounted for 31% of all car-related deaths. 17% of all children's deaths in car accidents are accounted to alcohol- impaired driving. Over half of all child passengers who died were in an alcohol-impaired driving accident. [http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...](http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired- drv_factsheet.html)

Oh yeah, alcohol is good stuff. More of it please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After reading the article, I'm not sure if I should modify my lifestyle to integrate small amounts of alcohol everyday. Would that have an impact on daily life? will that amount of alcohol kill brain cells affecting my cognition? what about degenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's?

Any insights would be appreciated.

<comment><USER5> > "In over half of nearly 45 reports since the early 1990s, significantly > reduced risks of cognitive loss or dementia in moderate, nonbinge consumers > of alcohol (wine, beer, liquor) have been observed." This finding has been > affirmed numerous times

The article suggests that moderate consumption is associated with improved cognitive function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure that taking a baby aspirin every day or two might not be 100 times better. I would not take this article too seriously. Alcohol is dangerous for a lot of people, I'd have trouble recommending it to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER7> Oh, please. I'd much rather die from a heart attack than die in the place and condition that alcohol took me to.

This creep is shamelessly and disgracefully pushing his stupid book.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have to admit I can be a bit reticent about having a drink every day, while maybe once a week having three pints with friends.</comment>


Show HN: Blog Idea Generator - <AUTHOR> http://titletool.contentforest.com/

<comment><USER2> The "Next 10 Suggestions" button shows up all the time, regardless of if there are suggestions or not. Also pretty fast for something that is returning an entire table to be injected into the DOM

<comment><AUTHOR> good point! makes sense not to show that when something does not exist - cheers for the feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are these subjects that are already published or are they unique?

<comment><AUTHOR> already been published - in the coming versions, you'll be able to generate unique titles :-)</comment></comment>


A Trick to Solve Bad Triangle with Python and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.ezzeddinabdullah.com/posts/bad-triangle-with-python-and-javascript <comment><AUTHOR> With Python and Javascript solutions: Learn how to think about Bad Triangle, an *800 codeforces problem</comment>


Recognising gym excerises in real-time using a neural network - <AUTHOR> http://dilpreetsingh.me/activity-recognition <comment><USER2> Here's a problem: I'm pretty sure you'd get just as good (probably _superior_ ) results with a simpler, faster out-of-the-box algorithm like logistic regression, random forests or boosted trees (depending on the amount of data). This just isn't a problem that seems well suited for neural networks.

Gyroscope/accelerometer data might seem like the kind of extremely-noisy, high-dimensional data well-suited for neural nets, but 1) you don't have a lot of data, and 2) intuitively the data isn't actually that noisy; my guess is the data separates out quite nicely (not necessarily linearly).

<comment><USER3> I agree and disagree. I would definitely start with a simpler algorithm like logistic regression or even trees and use temporal features like power at different frequencies by taking an FFT. I would even add time lagged features. After that I'd graduate to a single hidden layer MLP.

If I had tons of data (a lot of different people using it), I'd experiment with LSTM neural networks because I think the temporal information is crucial for determining a movement.

I think a killer app would be aimed at weight lifters. If you go to the gym, the serious weight lifters record their reps and weight for each exercise. The app would utilize the iWatch or some other wearable and detect the exercise and count the reps. Then it would prompt the user for how much weight they used.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right on the ball. I'm indeed using temporal features to classify, along with various other statistical ones.

The repetition counting in my next aim. Once apple opens up the gyro on the Watch, I think there could be a good chance to get something like this out the door.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Wouldn't a better approach be to initially train the neural network on more than just one person? That is a great point! In fact Microsoft's research arm published a paper last year doing exactly that. Although they achieved great results, their initial training cohort consisted of 94 participants! I, as a one man team, can't possibly duplicate that. This is why I created a system that can adapt, eliminating the need of Microsoft level resources."

\--

Rather than using an accelerometer (OP attached an old iPhone to his person while doing the movements) - you could plausibly point a camera and try to use video as the input.

If that pans out the next step would be using Mechanical Turk to cheaply and quickly build the initial training set (no pun intended) using publicly available videos of people working out.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting point. The problem here would be that video input would not provide accel+gryo motion information, which is what the network needs in order to learn.

If we instead simply used video information to track exercises the problem would be scaling that to consumers. They'd require an external camera to watch them.

But the idea of using Mechanical Turk is quite smart. It'd help me get varied form - especially if I can get them to wear a band/phone that has the sensors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> And this what happens when you bring a Computer Scientist into the gym! One question: how well would a neural network recognize a more complex and involved exercise like Kettlebell Turkish Getup compared to an exercise with simple movement like Push-ups?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question! Turkish Getup's are very complex like you say. Given my current setup and window length, it's unlikely that it'll recognise them, because one rep is very long. Maybe if I did exercise based window lengths it could work better? I'm honestly not sure. But that is something to try out!

<comment><USER5> To be honest, a human seeing it for the first time would have a hard time identifying Turkish Getups too :)

Also, identifying good form--that's an app that could help a lot of amateur athletes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's awesome! I didn't think this would work but it does. It would be amazing to combine this with a training tracking app. So far the data entry has always been really annoying so only machine exercises could really be captured properly. Really exciting stuff. I think this has a lot of potential for a startup!

</comment><comment><USER7> This might be a good chance to ask something that's been bothering me -- is there a good training log format for weightlifting?

I can find apps for recording training data, but they all use their own formats. Anyway, if there is one it would be cool if this program could use it as output, instead of making up its own ad-hoc format.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question. I'm also quite sick of all the logging apps that have their own unique formats.

If there is a standard out there, I'll definitely look at integrating that for the output.

<comment><USER7> Thanks! If you find one ping me, I'll do the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Actually thought about an app that would do this on a smartwatch. I would definitely buy a smartwatch if I could have this level of accuracy of body movement tracking.

<comment><USER9> WatchOS can detect the type of exercise, based on a recent talk I saw. Here's the docs on the types of exercises detected: [https://developer.apple.com/library/watchos/documentation/He...](https://developer.apple.com/library/watchos/documentation/HealthKit/Reference/HealthKit_Constants/index.html#//apple_ref/c/tdef/HKWorkoutActivityType)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is fantastic! Do you think it's feasible to develop this into a 1 phone solution? I can see a lot of applications in the rehab sciences area.

<comment><USER11> The article says the second phone is just for accelerometer data, so it could be replaced by some sort of Bluetooth device. I'm sure one of the many fitness trackers on the market provide real time data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool stuff. Is this open sourced by any chance? Just want to tinker with this a bit

<comment><USER13> Not truly open, but we have an SDK similar to this that you can play with.

It works with any open accelerometer (Apple Watch, Android Wear, Microsoft Band, Pebble). We track 50 exercises, auto classify 22, and there's a machine learning tool that let's you add new movements to the system and improve it over time.

www.focusmotion.io

<comment><USER12> Ok. I'll try it. Does this have a NodeJS SDK?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is great</comment>


Odoo's open source business model explained - <AUTHOR> https://www.odoo.com/blog/odoo-news-5/post/odoo-community-enterprise-532 <comment><USER2> Great deal for Odoo users, partners & Odoo themselves _thumbsup_

</comment><comment><USER3> Like the direction, but wish there was a reasonable way to pay Odoo for just platform upgrades. Would like to give them money, but not as a subscription for plugins we don't need or use.</comment>


The Fanimatrix film which is 15 years old, is becoming the oldest torrent file - <AUTHOR> https://www.eyerys.com/articles/timeline/fanimatrix-longest-living-torrent-file <comment><USER2> Previous discussion from yesterday [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102578) (194 comments)</comment>


Microsoft open-sources its patent portfolio - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-open-sources-its-entire-patent-portfolio/ <comment><USER2> This is huge. Whatever your views on M$, opening their vault and closing the doors on the royalties they were receiving shows a real commitment to OSS. Huzzah Microsoft.</comment>


The secret of a tech millionaire - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@johnroa/the-secret-of-getting-rich-on-startups-87958b9347da?1 <comment><USER2> Would love to hear some comments on finding a sweet spot between ideas with relatively low risk and relatively low reward and ideas with high risk and high reward. What is worth to pursue? Should this choice be influenced by how experienced one is with starting a business? Where risk is obviously influenced by many factors and up to interpretation.

How was this for you? Were you confident of beating the risks (e.g. market fit, technical expertise, funding, ...) when you started your business?</comment>


How to Learn React (and what to build along the way) - <AUTHOR> https://daveceddia.com/how-to-learn-react/ <comment><USER2> Dave's advice is excellent. Keep it simple, don't try to learn 20 different tools at once, and go from there.

My standard suggestions: start with the recently-revamped official React docs ( [https://facebook.github.io/react/](https://facebook.github.io/react/) ). Use the Create-React-App tool to set up a new project with no build configuration needed ( [https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react- app](https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-app) ).

Beyond that, I keep a big list of links to high-quality tutorials and articles on React, Redux, and related topics, at [https://github.com/markerikson/react- redux-links](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links) . Specifically intended to be a great starting point for anyone trying to learn the ecosystem.</comment>


Hipmunk needs to ramp up on usability - <AUTHOR> http://durga-ydydt.posterous.com/why-i-dont-use-hipmunk

<comment><USER2> I could not disagree more vehemently.

1\. Default sorting by agony has been _wonderful_ for me. I'm willing to pay a moderate amount more for a flight that _doesn't_ suck - whereas most travel sites would rather assume I'm a complete scrooge that wants to squeeze every last dollar off the price, redeyes and multi-airline connections be damned!

Hipmunk lets me look at pricing _and_ "quality of experience" at a glance. The nifty bars also let me make my _own_ decision about the "agony" of the flight instead of simply trusting Hipmunk's own metric.

2\. IMHO, nonsense. I've never been once confused by the "from $XXX" term on Hipmunk - it means that the price can vary depending on what I select for the other leg. Secondly, the problem with Kayak's approach is that I have to sift through _endless_ pages of the _same_ departing flight, but with varying returning flights - or vice versa. That's not empowering, that's tedium. If I could count the times on Kayak where I've had to compare prices, then compare if the two have the same departing flight... or the same returning flight... argh.

3\. I don't even know how to respond to this one. Everyone I've shown Hipmunk to, ever, has been _ecstatic_ about being able to pick the legs separately. Methinks the blog author falls into an edge case and is not representative of the general population. Hell, I think this is one of those things that will make Hipmunk _win_.

4\. So why is the precise departure or arrival important when deciding which flight you want to book? Does 9:05am vs. 9:20am really make a salient difference? From what I can tell, the whole _point_ of Hipmunk is that it gives you a more powerful overarching view of your choices, instead of getting you stuck in the details. Getting the precise time is as easy as clicking on a choice - but when I'm making a decision on the quality of a flight I sure as heck don't need to know my times down to the minute.

5\. I'll agree on this part. Being able to specify departure/arrival time ranges is pretty powerful.

6\. Could not disagree more. One thing that's I've liked about Hipmunk is the ability to run multiple searches in parallel. Kayak on the other hand forces me to open a new tab, fill in _everything all over again_ to do the same. The fact that Kayak will time-out your (very, very bodacious) search results after some time makes this doubly annoying. Kayak dumps you a metric ton of data and expects you to comb through it in _how long_?

7\. Agreed.

Bottom line: I think the author is disconnected from what consumers want out of flight searches. Or rather, what a large segment of consumers want, who are under-served by the current players in the market - that is to say, the people who are willing to pay some premium for a flight experience that isn't painful, and want a tool that will allow them to make this decision easily.

Kayak was a godsend when it first came out - it was so, so far ahead of what we dared call online flight booking. But, it's starting to show its age - lately I don't even want to go to Kayak, the search results page is like nails on chalkboard.

Here's a suggestion to Kayak that (IMHO) would massively improve the UX: group flight pairs by departing flight. Give me each departing flight, then for each departing flight give me the available returning flights and the corresponding package prices. That would make the results _so_ much easier to parse. As it is I get 10 different results that are all actually the same departing flight paired with every possible returning flight under the sun. It's annoying.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Hipmunk is very usable once you figure out how to use it, but after being trained by every travel website on the planet for years it is not very easy to use at first. I agreed with most of the authors points.

Last time I took a trip I tried out Hipmunk and was very confused about the picking my return flight separately. Once I figured it out, it was pretty cool. I still used Kayak though.

Kayaks ability to specify departure and arrival times is just too convenient if you're trying to work around a schedule. I think people like picking flights separately on Hipmunk to solve that exact problem and it's much simpler to do that on Kayak. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's why I like Kayak better.

As far as timing out searches goes, flight prices really do change every few minutes. I've waited an hour to buy a plane ticket and had to pay 20 more dollars. Kayak lets you save searches so at least you don't have to enter all your information again.

<comment><USER4> >Kayak lets you save searches so at least you don't have to enter all your information again.

The free iMacros macro recorder addons for IE, chrome and firefox solve this issue on any website: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/imacros- for-f...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/imacros-for-firefox/)

<comment><USER5> That is a hack at best around a usability problem in your service if that is your recommendation.

If I ran a website and my users were using such a thing I'd consider that a major fail on my part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A year ago, I tried multiple times to use Hipmunk, only to be turned off by the site. I don't think I "got it" then. Like the author, I found sites like Kayak or Bing easier to use. It returned the data I needed (cheapest price!) and did it well.

And then one day I needed to find flights based on departure times. As I played around with Hipmunk, I realized how much better the experience was. From the various sort methods (price, time, agony) linking to seatguru.com for research, and allowing me to purchase my trips in two steps, I've become a believer. My last three fights have all been booked through hipmunk without even considering visiting the other sites.

Basically, Hipmunk allows me to book flights that work for me (I want to leave Thursday at 4:45PM and return Friday at 6:40PM) rather than something that accommodates me (For 449 dollars, I can leave Thursday at 2:15PM and return Friday at 9:45PM. Or, if I'm flexible, I can save 50 and leave at 6:00 AM and return Friday at 4:00 PM... I guess I'll do that...)

<comment><AUTHOR> hey j79,

thanks for the comment. :)

I'll confess I don't quite get your last paragraph. Could you elaborate on how Hipmunk helps with schedules better than Kayak?

thanks Durga

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My immediate thought was "Nice try, Kayak employee" until I saw the bio at the bottom of the page.

Your points are a bit strange, and in some cases largely baseless criticism. You seem to want less power, and less overview? In that case, use any flight search engine that isn't Hipmunk.

There is one point that I dislike about Hipmunk that you did not touch upon: Its selection/coverage of non-America flights/airlines is lackluster (although recently it's been improving). I nearly always have to doublecheck with a local flight search engine to ensure that I'm getting a fair price.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. Far from it, I'm a fan of reddit and was excited when Hipmunk came out. There's a link to my first blog post on Hipmunk at the beginning of this post.

I haven't tried international flights yet. I do think Hipmunk will do really well if they fix the UI issues, even if they do only domestic flights well.

Didn't get the points in your 2nd paragraph. I'm arguing for more usability; how does that correspond to less power/overview? <AUTHOR>
</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > 6\. Modifying a flight search

I was hung up by this as well until I learned that "new search" _is_ a modified search that starts with the parameters from the old search. Still the lack of a modify button was discocerting even once I figured this out.

An additional complaint: once you select both legs to purchase and a dialog pops up where you can click to actually purchase there is no "x" to cancel or "escape" to go back. It was frustrating that I had to reload and lose all of my state to do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> hey onedognight,

Good points.

Hipmunk does start the new search with old parameters. And once one has discovered that, the mental burden of clicking on "New Search" does go down a little bit. Agree.

As you point out, the obvious counterpoint: how is this better than modifying the current search parameters?

One could perhaps argue that when a person is looking for 2 entirely different flights, it'd be useful to open the new search in a new window. But honestly, how common is the use case of a person searching for 2 entirely different flights at the same time? Not very common. When I'm on a travel website, I'm usually trying to book one particular flight. Perhaps a travel agency would disagree but is that really the mainstream market?

And if I needed to actually book 2 different flights, I'd just open a new tab in my browser to search for the 2nd flight. The "New Search" tab has no business being there.

To your 2nd point: I noticed that and was completely lost when I couldn't find a way to get rid of the popup. Then I realized by trial and error that clicking elsewhere on the page made it go away. This behavior might be intentional: don't give the user an obvious option to cancel, and thereby hopefully increase conversion. But it's going to backfire - users don't like to feel trapped.

Kayak has a similar popup with a clear X option.

Durga

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had been using Hipmunk ever since I first heard about it on techcrunch. I stopped using it a few weeks ago when I searched for a flight from BOS to DFW. Hipmunk told me there were ZERO non-stop flights on the return leg. Yet using the same exact search criteria on Orbitz or Kayak revealed plenty. I e-mailed them about it but never received a response, maybe they have fixed it. It doesn't matter how slick the UI is, if the data can't be trusted, I won't use it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I agree. I tried using Hipmunk but I keep going back to Kayak. I find it more usable and pretty. I can exclude certain airlines or f.ex. flights with more than one stop with the checkboxes. Plus changing departure and destination airports is a breeze. (I often browse available flights without having my mind set up on a destination.) The diagrams are useful, too.

<comment><USER11> > Plus changing departure and destination airports is a breeze. (I often > browse available flights without having my mind set up on a destination.)

Hipmunk's "new search" starts from your previous search. Just close the current tab (or click the new one) and change the destination airport. Even allows you to keep multiple searches open in different tabs to make your choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What most of these commenters seem to completely miss is that if a site is not obvious to a user in 2-6 seconds, it will not work and you will lose users. You cannot expect people to hover here and there nor read FAQs to understand the concepts.

I have nothing against HipMunk, but it does lack a clear value proposition when you land there.

</comment><comment><USER13> I haven't used Hipmunk because Kayak has always delivered results quickly and painlessly.

Hipmunk reminds me of Macro Economics in college, and how I had to extract so much information from lines on a graph. I'd break out in a cold sweat when asked to do so in front of the class. I hated it.

The Hipmunk graphs look like homework to me. I don't want homework. Just state the information clearly so I can move on with my life.

<comment><USER11> > The Hipmunk graphs look like homework to me. I don't want homework. Just > state the information clearly so I can move on with my life.

I find Hipmunk's information very clear: each row is a flight, you get the price, the rough departure/arrival time, the legs and layovers. If you want more info out of an interesting flight, click on it. Hovering gives you the precise departure and arrival times for the flight.

The only kind-of strange thing is the default sorting order, which I generally find excellent but looks messy at first glance.

In any case, it's unlike homework in every way, shape or form I can think of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hipmunk is good for finding the best flight, but the actual booking is much better on the carrier website.</comment>


Ask HN: Startup doubts: Running out of money - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
Since half a year I'm running a startup with a friend of mine. Now six months have passed and I'm running out of money. We are thinking about doing some consultancy work to bring in some revenue, but I don't know how easy it will be to get this work. Also, I'm not a coder and I have the feeling that there's not so much freelance work for a non-coding allrounder. I don't want a steady job because I think this will take all my time, and I would not have any time left for our startup.
What do you think about this? I would love to hear some of your experiences/advice.
Thanks a lot! <comment><USER2> Without knowing more details, I would tend to lean towards suggesting that you raise some angel money, oir shelve it while you work a full-time and stack some cash in the bank.

What you are describing sounds like the beginnings of a death-by-a-thousand- cuts timeline.

When you say "running", are you actually running a business (ie: managing customers, cash-flow, growing the product, expanding the business) or are you still in the phase of building something and trying to attract a cashflow?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. We do have some paying customers, but I guess we are more in the phase of building/improving and attracting customers.

<comment><USER2> If you have something that looks like it could be a viable business, you should probably (IMHO) look at Angel funding. The cash accelerant is probably more valuable in the long-run than the loss of equity on your part.

This is assuming (a lot) from the information you provided, which I seem to interpret as you're basically looking for some bridge money because you believe your company is viable, but just needs more runway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Get a part-time job. The constraints will be conducive to results.

</comment><comment><USER4> If your business grow at the same pace as in the last 6 months -- how long would it take you to become ramen profitable?

</comment><comment><USER5> It's very hard work getting bespoke work alongside writing a startup. Sales is hard. You're switching between projects ALL the time. EVERY day. Organically financing a project is hard.

I'd advise spending time with past-funders and their networks to see if they can raise enough to finance you finishing development.

</comment><comment><USER6> We can brainstorm some ideas for you via Skype if you'd like. Just contact me. Deets are in my profile.</comment>


007, a small experimental language with a license to macro - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/masak/007 <comment><USER2> Author here. Thanks for all the kind words. README files are important, and I worked quite a bit on this one. Had some fun writing it.

A quick summary of the language itself: I felt I needed a smaller language than Perl 6 to "think" in as I mapped out exactly what we want from macros. If you're curious about the latest shape of that thinking process, you'll want to read [https://gist.github.com/masak/13210c51f034f931af0c](https://gist.github.com/masak/13210c51f034f931af0c) .

Implementing 007 has been a fun thing, and largely easier than I thought. Mostly bottlenecked by available tuits. Somewhat surprisingly, I found it much tougher going to implement _user-defined operators_ than to implement _macros_. (But now that we have both, you can also haz custom operator macros!)

Next up, I plan to use 007 to map out as much of the terrain as possible covered by that gist above. That is, I want 007 to get synthetic Qtrees, really good handling of hygiene and lexical scoping, statement macros, _maybe_ multis if I feel it's worth the trouble, introspection of Qtrees, and visitor macros.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those interested in seeing the language, the README has a link to the tutorial ( [http://masak.github.io/007/](http://masak.github.io/007/) ) hidden at the very bottom of the (highly entertaining) narrative.

<comment><USER4> Aw c'mon, it was a gripping read until the end and then.. no unquote?!

<comment><USER2> Oh, we'll get unquotes, don't worry. It's more a question of not-yet- implemented than anything else.

Here I might as well ask HN what syntax I should go with for unquotes in 007. In Perl 6, unquotes are written as three nested braces: {{{$ast}}}

Almost no-one is happy with that syntax. It manages to be _distinctive_ (and can be easily syntax-highlighted, too) but pretty it ain't.

The difficulty of finding something better is that it has to be orthogonal to basically all other syntax in the language. And that's a challenge in Perl. :) People keep proposing Unicode sigils and stuff, but I haven't seen something I like yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have to admit I did not even look at the language itself, the README made me upvote this.

</comment><comment><USER6> Definitely more engaging than the usual "made with love" bootstrap website.

</comment><comment><USER7> That README was amazing.

<comment><USER8> Another project with an awesome README by the same author: [https://github.com/masak/ufo](https://github.com/masak/ufo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand a clue of what this macro thing is, but let's upvote this and every comment made by principle.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can confirm, this is how READMEs should be done.

</comment><comment><USER11> First time i read a README from first to last word. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER12> It sure was something different to read :)</comment>


Ask YC: Bubble survivors? - <AUTHOR>

Why does it seem like that in every bubble there are certain companies that seem to survive the bubble? Also which companies do you think will survive this bubble? <comment><USER2> The ones with a business model..

Revenues > costs

</comment><comment><USER3> Follow the YC mantra: "Make something people want"!

<comment><USER4> Better yet, make something people will pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Innovating ones. :-)</comment>


Can You Spot the Snipers Hidden in These Photos? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2014/03/hidden-snipers/

<comment><USER2> Nice examples, but to be fair these images are still very different from what you would experience in real life:

\- The resolution is very low and makes it even harder to see the soldiers

\- Depth perception is lacking (again, making it hard to find the soldiers)

\- These are still images. In real-life, you could spot anomalies with movement. (e.g. if grass is moving in the wind, you could spot some weird shape that is surprisingly still vs moving grass)

\- oh and of course if you have infrared goggles...

</comment><comment><USER3> These pictures barely have enough resolution to see the snipers when they're circled.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Look for the ghillie suit" narrows it down to 3-4 options per image. Of course, by that time, if I'm the target, he's already de-assing the place where I turned into a fine, red, mist.

Also, there's a big difference between the snipers that take you out at a distance where you could pick them out of the undergrowth and where you don't get the chance to hear the shot that took you out.

Snipers want to live, too, and they're very valuable. You may complain about the low resolution or the lack of IR or depth perception, but those won't help you find someone with the thermal signature of a rabbit 500-2000m away.

</comment><comment><USER5> Clearly, the solution is to ask them to please stand up. Didn't you people learn anything from "How Not To Be Seen"? :)

</comment><comment><USER6> The number of people pointing out that in real life they could use depth perception leads me to believe that there some HN readers are aliens whose eyes are significantly farther apart than human eyes [1].

It would be interesting if enough of these images were available to see how well Geoff Hinton or Yann LeCun (or a graduate student of either of them) could do on this with a neural network.

[1] Yes, I know that there are many monocular depth clues, but many (most?) of those work in photos (and movies). It is the binocular ones that people usually mean when they compare a photo to a live scene.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is too easy. You know what's _really_ fun? A crappy, low-resolution Where's Waldo. Have at it:

[http://i.imgur.com/Un9aIRe.png](http://i.imgur.com/Un9aIRe.png)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is kind of scary, however infrared would give away most of them. With kind of progress high-tech glasses have, I do not expect plain camouflage to be effective at such short distances for much longer.

</comment><comment><USER9> I love how many comments in this thread imply that they would be able to spot a sniper in real life, due to depth perception or whatever other factor.

There's a reason snipers are so feared in warfare. They tend to be very good at what they do, and what they do is kill people while avoiding detection.

These pictures make me respect sniper camouflage even more than I already did... if I can't spot them in a cropped picture, how would I ever spot them in a 360 degree landscape over an area of indeterminate size?

</comment><comment><USER10> And now in a way that doesn't force you to flip through that ad filled slideshow... [http://imgur.com/a/Ldx6T](http://imgur.com/a/Ldx6T)

<comment><USER3> There's no slideshow with javascript disabled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe growing up or spending a lot of time in the depicted environment helps? I spotted him right away in all but one of the woodland/meadow scenes but couldn't find him in the riverbed/rock scenes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Every time I thought I spotted one, I was wrong.

But clearly depth perception and movement, not to mention infared, would help distinguish them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not saying it would make it significantly easier, but not having depth perception does not help trying to pick out anomalies.</comment>


Two Days After Unveiling, Cr-48 Chrome Notebook Already Showing Up On Doorsteps - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/09/cr-48-chrome-notebook-delivered/

<comment><USER2> I was surprised to find out this morning that I received a CR-48.

My wife called me midmorning to let me know that UPS had left a page for me from a name neither of us had heard before. A few minutes later, I saw a link to this Techcrunch article on Twitter, so I suspected that maybe that was what was waiting for me at home.

Sure enough, when I went home for lunch, I opened the box and found the notebook.

I had no prior indication that I had been selected for the pilot program, and I believe I read somewhere that those not picked would not receive notice.

So, hopefully some of you will get a surprise too as they continue to roll these out.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like it's arriving expeditiously for TechCrunch because Google isn't stupid - they know they want press around this OS release so they already planned to ship it to the major blogs. I'd be curious to see if any HNers have theirs yet.

<comment><USER4> Seems like quite a few HNers are receiving theirs today: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1987536>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Surprised they didn't use sub-second precision ;)

"This application will be open until 11:59:59 PM PST on December 21, 2010."

</comment><comment><USER6> My greatest joy in that article was reading that the machine is 12.1 inches. I was afraid that it would have the same netbook sized build as all the others and that that would make it unusable for me (my fingers ache on 10 inches or smaller). Knowing this, I'm going to have to attempt to get in the runnings when I'm finished with my move! (a month from now)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there any indication if you've been rejected (other than simply not receiving a new toy?)

<comment><USER8> I was thinking about this while reading the other thread on this topic. I have no inside information but if I were Google what I'd do is have an automated system that profiles the Google accounts given with each application.

Since they couldn't have gone through all the applications that quickly I assume there is a triage system. Profiles that match exactly obviously got an automated shipment regardless of what else they put in their application. But I assume there's a "maybe" list that is gone through by an actual person (if not there'd be no point in asking all the essay questions)

Given that you might not know for some time (since you could not have matched the "instant shipment" list but might still be on the "maybe" list)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like they got as far as ripping the Mac keyboard/mousepad and went down bland-ville after that.

<comment><USER10> Seems like, having it free was not enough. Also if you read the article, you'll realize that it is a test machine for devs.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: When to choose AWS over a more typical VPS provider? - <AUTHOR> Our startup needs to move the hosting for our web app from a dev shop's physical server into the cloud.
The app runs a pretty standard Linux/Apache/MySQL/Java stack, doesn't have any serious computation or storage requirements, and targets a very niche market; 25 concurrent users would be the absolute maximum load expected for the next 6-12 months. It needs to be accessible 24 hours a day, but it's also no big deal if the app is down for a minute during a deploy.
The dev shop keeps pushing AWS, but I've heard enough horror stories about hidden charges and billing overages that I'm wary. Given the minimal load on the server, it doesn't seem like we'd need the scalability of Elastic Beanstalk or the storage of S3.
Are there any considerations I'm missing? How would you choose a host in this situation? <comment><USER2> If you have any linux experience I would recommended using DigitalOcean for your VPS. Their lowest tier server is plenty to run what you are looking to use it for, for only $5/month (No hidden fees). Even with just following a couple of their setup tutorials you would have a solid server that you have full control over, and if you are feeling generous you could even signup with my referral code and get $10 credit (Which would be two free months): [https://m.do.co/c/77c33ef2ad6e](https://m.do.co/c/77c33ef2ad6e)</comment>


Internet Girl, the College Drop-Out Making a Living on DePop - <AUTHOR> http://www.vogue.com/13464281/college-drop-out-making-a-living-on-depop/ <comment><USER2> This was almost an interesting article - I think it was just doomed by being in vogue. The story that there exist young women making money running tiny (1 person?) social media driven internet fashion retailers is cool.

And that [https://www.depop.com](https://www.depop.com) exists to support such things, and works, also cool.

But this story - barely hints at the interesting bits, sadly.

\--

Edit: fixed link, thanks andrewingram!

<comment><USER3> Working link: [https://www.depop.com](https://www.depop.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i've had friends doing this for years on other sites

i always like seeing people move on a business idea of taking a highly utilised hacky subset of one business and giving it the superset treatment</comment>


Why marijuana shops are forced to run like lemonade stands - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/5/10/5699376/why-marijuana-shops-are-forced-to-run-like-lemonade-stands

<comment><USER2> This is why just doing this at the state level is not enough. This story by NPR is really good:

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/07/182010027/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/07/182010027/episode-456-marijuana- arbitrage)</comment>


Best Way to Sort Lego? - <AUTHOR> https://marquisdegeek.com/lego_organisation <comment><AUTHOR> A modest proposal to best organise LEGO - is this the most efficient way of doing it? If not, what is?</comment>


New York Times: The Anti-Social-Network Social Network - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/the-anti-social-network-social-network/?src=tptw

<comment><USER2> Title should be fixed so that it doesn't make one think that New York Times is the social network in question.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What do you guys think of algorithms? Do they work well? Know of any good examples?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a HN clone that can remove NYtimes, WashPost, etc. - <AUTHOR> I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I tend to come to HN in short bursts while code is deploying or similar things, and will read headlines really quickly. This causes me to end up on NYTimes, WashPost, etc excessively because they're really good at writing catchy titles.<p>Does anyone know of a HN clone that can remove news outlets like the nytimes? and if that doesn't exist is that something that anyone else would like built? <comment><USER2> It shouldn't be another full site, or even a plugin for a (single) browser. It should simply be a Greasemonkey script that accepts a whitelist/blacklist. I'll write it up for you tonight after work ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have seen this topic before. It could be a feature of the site, or a plugin. I see many sites as being fake, misleading or just plain outright dumb (buzzfeed, vox, vice). Should not be able to post a URL to these types of sites, but that is a topic for another day. I just hide the posts I dont like and move on....

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm totally in agreement. HN should flag pay walled sites somehow so we know not to waste our time.

<comment><USER5> I do this with a bit of CSS:

/* Pay-Wall Domains */

a[href^="[https://www.ft.com/"](https://www.ft.com/")]::after,

a[href^="[https://www.newscientist.com/"](https://www.newscientist.com/")]::after,

a[href^="[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/"](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/")]::after,

a[href^="[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/"](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/")]::after,

a[href^="[https://www.wsj.com/"](https://www.wsj.com/")]::after {

      color: rgba(128,0,0,0.75) !important;

      content: " $ " !important;

}

I imagine there are loads more pay-walled domains here, but these are the ones I've seen frequently...

If it's not obvious, this places a red dollar sign after any links to the listed domains.

<comment><USER6> Thank you, I had not thought of doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An interesting spin would be a site or grease monkey script to hide any posts to high traffic domains, leaving you with all the small bloggers etc. GitHub could be excepted.

</comment><comment><USER8> Should be pretty straightforward to write a Chrome plugin that hides posts from domain names that you choose to blacklist.

</comment><comment><USER9> lobste.rs

is the closest, I think. The requirements to become a posting member, are different (by referral, at least for now).

Good, if software tech is primary interest (but there much fewer discussions (and participants) in mathematics, chem, structured engineering, physics).</comment>