Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercedesbenzofnatick.com/new-features-mercedes-benz-comand-system.htm <comment><USER2> I lost most of my hearing in my left ear in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. No other injuries. The audiologist said that my eardrum was in the kind of state you usually only see in battlefields from exposure to large explosions.

People are always surprised when I tell them this was my only injury, and as a result I've always wondered how common this type of injury is with vehicle collisions. This is the first thing I've seen which makes me believe that it's a lot more common than people suspect.

Very cool! I hope this is taken up by other brands as well.

<comment><USER3> There was a blogpost I read a few years back written by someone who damaged their hearing after dropping a porcelain toilet lid. They actually ran some back-of-the-envelope calculations to estimate the decibel level, I recall it being shockingly high.

<comment><USER4> There was a pretty good HN comment thread about it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16723099](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16723099)

From the linked thread:

""" 5\. The stupid toilet bowl lid only fell about 8 inches. How could it damage my hearing so badly? I looked up the speed of sound in ceramic, divided by the length of the toilet bowl lid (and divided by 2 since the fundamental vibration is a half wavelength). This predicts 3.5 kHz.

6\. This frequency is in the audible range. Using the short dimension of the toilet bowl predicts another (higher) frequency. The toilet bowl lid probably resonated at both those frequencies and their harmonics, putting all the energy into just those specific wavelengths.

7\. The toilet bowl lid was not chipped or damaged, so the impact energy went mainly into sound (& internal heat) Maybe like half the impact energy went into sound energy. This lid was concave up like an antenna, near my face when it hit, focusing the energy into my face.

8\. The energy travels into your inner ear and the cochlea. The pressure wave is strongest at some distance down the cochlea depending on frequency. Since the toilet bowl lid put all the energy into SPECIFIC FREQUENCIES, it was concentrated onto specific spots in the cochlea.

9\. Apparently, this concentration of energy was enough to damage the hairs -- to bend them over like trampled grass -- and I was concerned it could be permanent. My hearing was only slightly better the next morning. It was like everybody was still talking at me through kazoos. """

Fascinating. Be careful around dropping shatter-proof ceramics, I suppose!

<comment><USER5> Be careful dropping glass bottles into recycling bins too; they pose nearly the same problem - they don't usually shatter and the sound escapes the bin upwards towards you.

<comment><USER6> Why isn't this taught to everyone at a young age? I had no idea this could happen and it kind of terrifies me that I can lose my hearing so easily like this without having any clue.

<comment><USER7> Then go buy the toilet lids that don't drop with the acceleration of gravity, i. e., "soft close". Hearing loss or not, I don't want to hear anyone dropping the toilet lid in the middle of the night.

<comment><USER8> The culprit was actually a _lid on the tank_. I've never seen a toilet lid, soft close or not, that doesn't have plastic pieces that prevent full direct contact between the lid and the part below it. They'll deform under pressure, taking the noise level down from unbearable to just loud.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I saw that it was the lid after I posted. In fact, I even _remember_ the original post, and at the time thought, "huh, never even thought of that". Welcome to middle age, where a _lot_ of stuff starts to occur to you after the fact. :-|

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just want to say that this is exactly the type of thoughtfulness, design, engineering and research that justifies the price difference in something like a Mercedes and something like a Honda. There are _so many_ small triumphs like this in class-leading, high-end vehicle manufacturers that go unnoticed and unsung and allow people with 2019 Accords to say things like "why would I pay $45,000 for _that_ when I get better auto-steering for half the price?".

Certainly there are subtleties to high end cars like road feel, steering, throttle feedback, and ergonomics that are only apparent to "car people" and thus work the premium versus something that is more "point A to point B". I applaud Mercedes for not only putting the effort into deploying a feature like this, but also for marketing it.

<comment><USER10> How about the difference in long-term cost of ownership, serviceability, and overall reliability?

It's certainly one kind of car person that wants the latest and greatest nearly all the time. Some like to patronize particular auto makers, like fashionistas patronize fashion houses. It's quite another, equally valid kind of car person to take used examples of far simpler, utterly reliable cars and add suspension, brakes, forced induction, tuning, and so on far beyond what any manufacturer fits on any mass-market vehicle. They patronize component makers, often race- or restoration- oriented.

As for the non-enthusiasts, if you plan to lease a vehicle or trade it in every few years like clockwork, the eventual cost of added complexity might never affect you, apart from resale value. But the virtue of combining good mechanical QA with simplicity and serviceability is also much unsung, and cheaper, not more expensive.

<comment><USER11> > How about the difference in long-term cost of ownership, serviceability, and > overall reliability?

Long-term owner of a 2004 Mercedes W211 E320 CDI in Europe, with 420k kilometers on the clock.

The inline 6-cylinder engine and the 5-speed auto transmission still work buttery smooth and the car pulls like a train without ever smoking. No interventions have ever been done to the engine and trans, apart from changing consumables on-time. The car still has a very solid feel to it, without any interior rattles and squeaks, with very few wear-and-tear signs on the interior. The original paint is still gleaming. The thickness of the paint and the metal is easily noticeable. A Honda of the same age and miles would probably still run, but will feel sub-par in most of these respects.

The car has a lot of electronic systems controlled by dedicated electronic units, the most notable of which is the brake-by-wire SBC system. It had been causing problems in early production, but the issue was fixed and that unit was replaced under warranty on almost all cars. It was a big reputation hit for Mercedes, though. That system was very innovative in the sense that it provides a common architecture for implementing traction control, ABS, brake- hold, etc.

So far, none of these systems have failed on my car, apart from the need to replace a few failed sensors for which I got warnings on the dashboard and were diagnosed easily while in the repair shop.

<comment><USER12> Just wanted to share that I am a proud owner of a 2005 W211 E320 as well, gas however. 235k miles on the clock and it still starts up with the same 2 cranks and woosh as it did new and pulls on the highway just fine. Definitely a quality vehicle that has not only held up but hardly degraded since new.

<comment><USER13> I once talked to a taxi/cab driver about, why (in germany) almost every taxi/cab are a Mercedes. He said, that is is because of the insane durability of Mercedes cars. Plus it's easier for them to maintain them, since even for older cars there are plenty of repair parts (is that the correct term?) available.

<comment><USER10> Mercedes in Germany tend to be made in Germany, and there's a network effect in having so many around. I imagine Merc spares availability in Germany is a bit like Ford or Chevy parts availability in the US. With cabs, it's not a question of whether there will be issues, but when, and for how much. Here in the US, cabs routinely do full engine swaps to stay on the road. So many US fleets, like police departments, favor American cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why not link to the source directly at Mercedes [1]?

The website has only added marketing to the information available in the video from the original site.

I honestly thought this is satire until I saw it from the source, but this is actually pretty cool.

[1] [https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/next/connectivity/pre- safe-...](https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/next/connectivity/pre-safe-sound- playing-pink-noise-in-the-split-second-before-impact/)

<comment><USER15> I like the OP better, to be honest.

Your link is weirdly formatted on my machine to the point it looks broken.

Also I prefer reading text to watching a video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish fire alarms did this for half a second before blasting your tympanic membrane with an ear-splitting noise. Residential ones are bad enough, but the ones in offices are the worst.

<comment><USER17> That's a good idea! I bet if someone were to develop a residential smoke detector that did that it would sell well. (Especially if it had other compelling features like a 10-year battery.)

<comment><USER18> FYI - The 9V Lithium batteries last that long.

[https://www.amazon.com/Energizer-LA522SBP-Lithium-Battery- De...](https://www.amazon.com/Energizer-LA522SBP-Lithium-Battery- Detectors/dp/B003VKOEBM)

<comment><USER17> Good to know! We bought a few with integrated 10-year batteries from Home Depot a few years back, but I didn't realize you could get regular lithium 9Vs that last that long in a smoke detector now.

<comment><USER19> You should replace the smoke detector after 10 years anyway so buying the disposable ones is probably safer.

<comment><USER20> !! even the hard-wired ones are supposed to be replaced after 10 years, and _new_ hard-wired ones will automatically brick themselves after the 10 years is up !!

<comment><USER17> For anyone reading this wondering how that's safe, I believe they make noise regularly once they reach this state, to encourage you to replace them, rather than just silently failing to operate!

<comment><USER20> Yep, blip every 30 seconds for 6 weeks, until they go silent.

It'll drive you nuts, especially if your handy builder put them in out-of- reach places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think this should be marked [2015], as the video included on the site was uploaded in 2015.

But still, this is really cool! I also didn't know that the ear has a "self- defense" mechanism against loud noise. I wonder how that mechanism interacts with things like headphone audio being played at high volumes. Does the mechanism eventually wear out? How does that affect people who do sound effects/mixing/mastering for a living?

<comment><USER22> > Does the mechanism eventually wear out?

I hope not, because I have been able to control the muscle voluntarily and it is still works after almost four decades.

It doesn't go off by itself all the time though. It's more for sudden loud noise, I don't think it works at all for sustained loud noises.

<comment><USER23> >I hope not, because I have been able to control the muscle voluntarily and it is still works after almost four decades.

Oh, is _that_ how the brain rumblies thingy works? Huh, I never realized most people couldn't do that.

<comment><USER24> I realized it was rare, but I've never been able to explain what I'm doing to other people. Now I finally know!

<comment><USER25> Whoah! I thought everyone could do this!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm guessing an engineer named it the German equivalent of "pre-crash" sound, then someone in marketing decided that "pre-safe" sounds better. It may be better to call it "foreplay" sound, since if you ever hear it you're probably screwed.

<comment><USER27> Some technical disciplines use "safe" as a transitive verb meaning "to make it safe", either from damage or from damaging other things.

I've seen it most often in rocketry contexts - you "safe the rocket" in an aborted launch scenario so it won't go off accidentally, etc.

      "It is a good idea to add a safety release valve to your launcher. Sometimes it is important to abort a launch and safe the rocket after it has been pressurised." http://www.aircommandrockets.com/rocket_launcher.htm (Google "safe the rocket" for occasional other examples.)

So the PRE-SAFE sound means the sound is to "safe your ears" before the crash, making them safe from damage.

<comment><USER28> But for that definition it's not "pre" anything. It's either a safing sound, or a pre-collision sound.

<comment><USER27> The event is the collision.

It's safing in advance of the event (pre-safe), rather than after the event (post-safe), which would be too late.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The Mercedes is known for being more expensive than most, but in most cases, it's worth it, not only for the luxury, but for the extreme attention to detail they put into safety.

For example, when you get into one, it will adjust the tension of the seatbelt automatically to be ideal for each passenger. And of course this pink noise. And a ton of other little things that cost extra that most people will never notice.

There's a reason the Mercedes is always at or near the top of any vehicle safety list.

<comment><USER30> Unfortunately they don't devote any attention to longevity or serviceability. But yes the safety features are excellent.

<comment><USER14> Mercedes is actually known for their engine longevity, reliability and serviceability.

Yes they have more issues with technology than other cars, but that's because they use more and newer technology than cheaper brands. [1]

[1] [https://www.osv.ltd.uk/are-mercedes-benz- reliable/](https://www.osv.ltd.uk/are-mercedes-benz-reliable/)

<comment><USER31> I would find this more compelling if i hadn't had a Mercedes written off because of their "smart" technology choices.

Apparently with their vehicles (in this case a C180/2004) the tensioner is power-dependent and requires the vehicle to be used somewhat frequently to work at all. This means that simply by not using the car for 4-5 months, my dad returning to it and turning it on for < 3 seconds resulted in the motor starting with the tensioner not working, resulting in timing chain failure which irreparably damaged the valves and motor to the extent the vehicle was written off.

I don't have much automotive expertise by any means, but my understanding is that tensioner design in other makes of car generally do not experience critical failure when presented with "being used seldomly".

<comment><USER32> it's disappointing that the tensioner of all things would fail in that situation, but long intervals between use is a problem for all cars.

if your dad regularly lets a car sit for five months without driving it, he's going to have a lot of car troubles. ought to at least take it out a couple times a month, just for 20-30 minutes (ie, long enough to get fully warmed up).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's crazy how fast a car deals with a collision. In the event of an actual crash, the car is _done_ processing the event and deploying all safety measures (airbags, seatbelt pretensioners, etc) before your body even begins to recognize the sensations of impact.

<comment><USER34> Not only that. Modern safety systems distinguish between different types of crashes and compute e.g. the optimal time to deploy the relevant airbags while the crash is happening. Supposedly, some implementations rely on piezo crystals embedded into the car frame to measure how the car is being deformed during the collision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Mercedes did a small YouTube series on this together with Veritasium. Very interesting material.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82BRWm4SGL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82BRWm4SGL8)

</comment><comment><USER36> > "PRE-SAFE® Sound is activated if your vehicle detects that a collision is > unavoidable"

See also: Peril Sensitive Sunglasses™

<comment><USER37> Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Given that manufacturers are thinking seriously about reducing road death to zero (well in survivable speed scenarios) [1] I guess looking at secondary effects is the next step

[1][https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/287046-why-volvos- cappin...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/287046-why-volvos-capping-top- speed-at-112-mph-the-elusive-quest-for-zero-deaths)

</comment><comment><USER39> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_reflex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_reflex) for people interested in 'stapedius reflex' that the article talks about.

</comment><comment><USER40> This sounds like it's something new, but I thought Mercedes had been doing this for a long time already (read about it some years ago).

</comment><comment><USER41> FYI, the pink noise sample in the video played back at 80 dB on my MBP (2017, 13") when I set the volume to max. I used an iPhone app to test the dB, and when I put the mic about an inch from the speaker, it registered about 80 dB.

Back where I was sitting, it was much much lower, and definitely didn't affect my hearing.

</comment><comment><USER42> Listen to it here: [https://www.autotrader.com/car-video/video-heres-what- merced...](https://www.autotrader.com/car-video/video-heres-what-mercedes- benzs-pre-safe-sound-sounds-action-281474979935876)

</comment><comment><USER43> Well, that may of finally explained such musical releases such as [https://g.co/kgs/2SgdjX](https://g.co/kgs/2SgdjX) at least for the budget car enthusiast market.

</comment><comment><USER44> Some of the comments, just like PRE-SAFE SOUND, sound like an April Fool's Joke. But, apparently, it isn't. Very interesting, indeed. I never would have thought, that something like this might be an issue.

</comment><comment><USER45> Am I the only one who listened to the video and didn't have anything happen with my tensor tympani? I can voluntarily control mine ("ear rumbling") so I know what it would feel /sound like.

<comment><USER41> Unless you played it pretty loud, nothing should happen. What speakers did you play it through, and at what volume?

<comment><USER45> I played it at max volume on my P30 Pro next to my ears and didn't hear anything... I'll try a more scientific test with an actual loudness measurement later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > > "[https://www.mercedesbenzofnatick.com"](https://www.mercedesbenzofnatick.com")

That's one long domain name...

</comment><comment><USER47> Could this be used by the military to lessen combat injuries?

<comment><USER48> Less combat would lessen combat injuries even more.

<comment><USER49> And lessening car crashes would help with injuries far more than pre-safe sound. Unfortunately both are innevitable.

<comment><USER50> American combat injuries are anything but inevitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12813633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12813633)

</comment><comment><USER52> That's pretty cool. Something non-obvious when we think about engineering vehicle safety. Of course it only matters if you make it out ok :)

</comment><comment><USER53> Couldn't they come up with a more interesting name, say, "nudge-note"?

</comment><comment><USER54> Now this is innovation! "Simple" and clever!

</comment><comment><USER55> Is this why it doesn't hurt your ears when you holler?

</comment><comment><USER56> I bought a Mercedes because of this tech.

</comment><comment><USER57> "Mercedes-Benz is constantly at the forefront of automotive safety technologies" - not really. Rear wheel drive, which is common in mb and bmw cars are a real danger in winter. Volvo claims, and seems to be, a safer and more at the forefront of safe driving choice.

<comment><USER58> Modern day traction control systems have taken the majority of danger from power oversteer out of cars.

But then the only advantage you get in winter driving comes from fitting tyres (or tyre chains) appropriate to the conditions.

<comment><USER59> I prefer front wheel drive but I was impressed with how a RWD Buick with traction control handled in the winter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I can't wait until there's an app to force this sound on via bluetooth on every benz you drive past on the interstate :)</comment>


YC S10: The Definitive Demo Day Debrief - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/08/25/the-definitive-y-combinator-demo-day-debrief/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> The single page version will save you from hitting next a few times:

[http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/08/25/the- definiti...](http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/08/25/the-definitive-y- combinator-demo-day-debrief/?single_page=true)</comment>


Ask HN: Homepage header links - any best practices? - <AUTHOR>

When it comes to what links should be in the header of web app's homepage, is there any common wisdom on what should or shouldn't be there?
For example:
http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com has Services, Buzz, About, Pricing, plus a smaller nav bar with Developers, API, Blog, DevBlog, Twitter, and Contact
http://www.picwing.com/ has Home, Tour, Pricing, FAQ, Contact
http://mixpanel.com/ has Sign Up, Demo, Pricing, Documentation, Login
http://bingocardcreator.com/ has Home, Purchasing, Free Trial, Support, Contact Us, Blog, and Sign In
Not all of these apply to my app, but most do. I could reasonably have a Home, Tour, Pricing, FAQ, Contact, About, Buzz, Examples, Sign Up, Sign In, and Twitter links up there, but that seems a bit excessive, and I'm not sure how to boil it down to the essentials. The order seems important too.
Any recommendations?
PS: The site in question is http://www.preceden.com <comment><USER2> I haven't done any A/B testing on this as it's not live yet, but this is the homepage we're putting together to tease our product on GetMochi.com. It will eventually evolve into the product home page (probably replacing the 'e-mail' signup with a real signup button) when we launch.

<http://i47.tinypic.com/wcd0nq.png>

The mockup has undergone a few user test (5 people).

Here's the .BMML file for Balsamiq Mockups if you want to use it yourself: <http://drop.io/mochisignup>

I'll try to update the drop when anything changes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great question. Unfortunately, I think the answer is "it depends." It will probably depend on your particular audience and the way they interact with your site.

What I'd suggest is an A/B test with a few different header link layouts.

My guess is having the "Sign in" link at the far right is a good idea, since it's easy to find. But what do I know? The data you get from an A/B test will probably be more relevant than any guesses I come up with.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not sure if you are asking to review your idea, but its sort of a cool utility. Anyways, in your case, I would use Examples , Guides & FAQ , and Login. In your case I would keep it simple, because overall your product looks a little overwhelming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not looking for a review; did that a few months ago :). Thanks though.

I've changed up the header links quite a few times, and am just looking for pointers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Search. Always helpful.</comment>


How to Steal a Phone Number (And Everything Linked to It) - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40432975/how-to-steal-a-phone-number-and-everything-linked-to-it <comment><USER2> Meanwhile Google tries by all means to obtain your phone number and until very recently tried really hard to have you use SMS for 2FA.</comment>


The Disappearing Poor - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/the-disappearing-poor-6c68789e5a53 <comment><USER2> Is this only applicable to the western countries, or are you using data from the east?

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of:

[https://momsguidetotravel.com/bill-gates-and-the-global- poor...](https://momsguidetotravel.com/bill-gates-and-the-global-poor/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that's got an amazing line:

Bill Gates predicts that by 2035, "there will be almost no poor countries left in the world."

I'd never heard that. Great news!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ireland richer than Switzerland?!? In terms of GDP maybe, but not in terms of wealth amongst the population. I.e. this article is incorrect.

</comment><comment><USER5> Could have been titled "The disappearing Middle class" but hey who wants to talk about late stage capitalism.

[https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2018/2/2/16868838/el...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2018/2/2/16868838/elephant-graph-chart-global-inequality-economic- growth)

<comment><USER6> That article leads with a graph that shows massive gains for ~80% of the world's population and then tries to claim that this is a bad thing.

<comment><USER7> The thing is, it depends on your perspective. Local to America, yes there is a vanishing middle class.

Globally, yes there is a lift out of poverty.

Ideally we would see a global lift out of poverty without any local negative impacts re middle/upper classes - everybody rising to the same level instead of some rising and some falling. It's also a lot easier to rise out of poverty when it takes relatively little advancement, and easier to fall into poverty when it takes relatively little loss.

I think that aspect of things is often overlooked - poverty doesn't mean the same thing everywhere, and middle class doesn't mean the same thing everywhere. Some areas are rising, but some are falling - as a sum, things are rising.

It's the same thing as global warming - yeah, some areas are getting colder instead of warmer and this is pointed to as being evidence of global warming == false, but global warming refers to on _average_ across the whole globe not just a single region.

People tend to conflate their local with the global, sometimes because they just miss it and sometimes deliberately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The "exploiting xenophobia" explanation rings hollow.

The mainstream media has long been the lapdog and mouthpiece of the elite (deep state)--see Operation Mockingbird, which continues to this day.

It serves the purposes of our masters to keep us divided and fearful (as well as only "bad news" making the buck), but it's not xenophobia they're pushing, it's a generally negative view of reality to keep us discouraged and turning to them for leadership.</comment>


How to take smart notes with Org mode - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/how_to_take_smart_notes_org/ <comment><USER2> > Notes aren't a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process. > – Richard Feynman

I haven't ever found a quote that described how i approach software as succinctly as this. I use a bullet journal religiously and it's specifically because of this.

Great article.

<comment><USER3> Love the quote and the idea too. Check out Roam^1 which completely changed my relationship to note-taking.

1 [https://roamresearch.com](https://roamresearch.com)

<comment><USER2> I actually use Roam quite regularly! However, I have found Roam is better for solidifying and consolidating my handwritten notes at a later point.

For me it goes: 1 - handwritten brain dump 2 - Re-read my notes, analyze them and prep them for consolidation. This means writing down questions I have, updating notes I took that I might have better understanding of now, etc... 3 - Consolidate and import them into Roam with links and supplementary materials (images, code snippets, etc...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've seen it suggested before that while 'tasks' need to be well-structured, reference/notes don't.

I like the idea of not trying to store notes in a hierarchy, but using search and/or tags to try and reference (or discover relations between) notes.

I like the article's emphasis on "how do I want to access this later?". TBH Sometimes I've looked up previous bookmarks or notes, and they didn't have the keywords or tags I was expecting. I'd suggest [https://github.com/EFLS/zetteldeft](https://github.com/EFLS/zetteldeft) as another project which more/less supports some of the workflow suggested in the article.

That said, yeah, I do prefer pen and paper for worklog notes.

<comment><USER5> > TBH Sometimes I've looked up previous bookmarks or notes, and they didn't > have the keywords or tags I was expecting.

I also use a personal set of scripts for Zettelkasten (in combination with rofi) and I do encounter this sometimes. I've come to the conclusion that it's not a large problem: as long as you find the notes you're looking for most of the time, it's good.

I think the problem of _always_ finding _all_ notes that are relevant to _each_ search is too hard and has diminishing returns. It's best to simply avoid it by relaxing your expectations.

<comment><USER6> Part of the Zettelkasten philosophy is that it _requires_ you to actively work on links between notes. Some notes are simply forgotten, Luhmann (the original Zettelkasten master) used to say, unless they are indexed into your system.

<comment><USER5> Yes, and I do actively work on the links. My point is there is no need for perfection here. Good enough is good enough.

If some of the notes are forgotten, so be it. I place my requirements and expectations on the system as a whole, not on each particular note. If the overall system is useful and serves me well, I don't care if some of the notes are forgotten _and_ I've reduced my workload and note loss anxiety by several orders of magnitude. This is what I meant by diminishing returns.

However, with full-text search, it's hard to imagine how any note could be forgotten completely, unless it contains no text at all. This is something Luhmann did not have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used to use Evernote then org-mode heavily but switched to pen and paper notes and haven't looked back. Whenever I used org-mode I started tweaking Emacs and writing macros for hours.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I'm a big emacs and org mode fan, but use pen and paper now for note taking.

I think this is mainly due to the fact that my note pad sits at my desk as a constant reminder of what needs to be done. Org files sit in my file system and are often forgotten.

<comment><USER9> Interesting. I always have my notes window open in one half of my monitors. I use it for everything while developing, including pseudocode, developing SQL queries, planning my changes, etc. I use it as a digital scratchpad.

<comment><USER10> Same. This process works but I have realized the crucial need of tags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Jethro Kuan's earlier posts on Org mode for planning finally made the idea click for me (maybe just the last straw on the camel's back). I strongly recommend checking those out too.

Btw, to Notion users — does anyone feel that it's matched/surpassed Org mode in the breadth of workflows it supports?

<comment><USER12> I've actually been flip-flopping between Notion and Org-mode for months, and just the other day decided to finally organize myself all on Notion.

I love Org-mode, and will likely continue to use it for various things, but I agree that Notion is the only thing that (to me) surpasses it.

<comment><USER13> My two biggest problem with notion are no offline storage of data and monthly payments.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, notion looks great but for this particular case, the part the about being tied to a montnly fee to be able to write my personal notes didn't felt right. Also the friction to write notes felt higher, unless you leave your browser always opened and logged in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hi! Author here, happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER16> I'm in the process of moving all my organization stuff into org-mode. This includes agenda, todo lists, project management and notes. This is a long process with a lot of fine tunings and try/errors. But, for me it's like what you said about writing : it's in the process of doing it that you think. This helps me understand my actual needs. And emacs/orgmode is so powerfull and customizable that it's a very goos tool to do that.

Some weeks ago, I read your series of articles about org-mode workflow. I was especially insterested by the one about zettelkasten. This was a trigger for me to switch my notes into org-mode. So I would like first to thank you for your good quality articles !

What interests me in your new package is the automatic link/backlink detection between notes. This is a really great feature I was missing that in the other packages. I'm currently using zetteldeft and I insert hashtags into my notes to be able to search them by tag.

I would like to try org-roam. My question is : in what way should I modify my current note files to be compatible with org-roam ?

<comment><USER15> Glad you enjoyed the articles!

> My question is : in what way should I modify my current note files to be > compatible with org-roam ?

In contrast to zetteldeft, the links in org-roam are real file links. This means you need to replace all of the zetteldeft links with actual org file- links.

That should be all the changes required I think.

<comment><USER17> I just gave it a try. It is so easy to insert a link/backlink ! Adopted.

<comment><USER15> good to hear (: feel free to make feature requests/bug reports on the repo. It should become a lot more stable soon, then we can start making it more awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish orgmode would apply Todo to simple bullet or number lists and not only * * _(.. ) form.

I wish orgmode used space)tab indents not _ / * * /* * * stacking

<comment><USER4> > Tab intends and not * stacking

The org-hide-leading-stars variable visually hides the leading stars, which sounds like it might suit your preference. [https://orgmode.org/worg/org- tutorials/org-appearance.html](https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org- appearance.html)

> TODO to simple bullet or numbered lists

Org-mode lists can have checkboxes (like markdown has on GitHub). [https://orgmode.org/manual/Checkboxes.html](https://orgmode.org/manual/Checkboxes.html)

But I feel this is exasperated by org-headings not having a 'closing' syntax (like XML elements). Since you can't "close" a heading, you can't easily just continue the content of a heading after the content of its sub-headings; so to have a 'TODO' list within the contents of a heading, subheadings aren't an option.

<comment><USER18> Thanks TIL

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> is asciidoc similarly powerful?

I have everything in org/githubpages but I often get a bit frustrated with Emacs and its clunkiness. My issue is that orgmode has no spec and is so tightly coupled to Emacs - so ive ended up unintentionally married to the whole ecosystem.. I've been considering migrating away from org but I don't have any great alternative in mind

<comment><USER20> Asciidoc seems to be just a format.

For me, the main benefits of org-mode are the Emacs keybindings to handle the docs semantically, to e.g. move the headings around, nest a whole hierarchy, archive a heading, etc. Also, the agenda view is really useful.

I've been using org-mode mostly to keep day-by-day notes in files such as ~/org/diary/2020-02-15.org, which I create for a given day from a keybinding. I've been thinking of starting to make personal backlogs in the form of org- mode files, keeping the headings ordered by priority, and archiving each heading when I'm done with them. All the benefit of using org-mode here comes from the keybindings.

> My issue is that orgmode has no spec and is so tightly coupled to Emacs

The spec is the org-mode manual. What other programs do, like Orgzly on Android, is to just support what they can of the format. They don't need to have feature-parity with org-mode on Emacs to be useful.

<comment><USER21> Spec for the curious: [https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org- syntax.html](https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I used to be a religious Org-mode user. Over time, accumulating lots of info and time registrations, I felt I lost the big picture.

<comment><USER23> What did you lose exactly?

How can we feel in love again with Org?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I find org mode little complicated for my taste.

My note taking is some plain text files in hierarchy and vim. It works even on Android phone using termux. And I am pretty much used to it.

For todo, I have a shellscript that takes an argument and open text file of that name. Works reasonably well.

Plus, prefix your text files with .md and get all the formatting stuff.

<comment><USER25> Have you tried vimwiki[1]? I've been using it for a daily journal for the past couple of weeks and it's been quite good. I was using it for tasks as well, but then found Taskwarrior[2] and have since moved on to using it.

[1]: [https://vimwiki.github.io/](https://vimwiki.github.io/) [2]: [https://taskwarrior.org/](https://taskwarrior.org/)

<comment><USER24> I am not a prolific vim user, I used nano for same purpose a month ago, where its keybindings were so customized that I thought I'd rather take a chance to learn vim (I am a student).

Have heard about vimwiki. But maybe because I am a student, text files suffice for my purpose. Thanks for reminding about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What level of emacs knowledge does org mode require such that it is actually useful to me and can do stuff Microsoft onenote cannot?

<comment><USER27> I love org mode, but to be honest I think the killer feature of org mode is that it is implemented in the same editor I use for programming. In fact, I had moved from Emacs to Vim several years prior, but moved back to Emacs simply for org mode (and luckily Evil is good enough that I don't really miss Vim at all). Additionally, everything is ascii. There aren't different editors for different kinds of objects because there aren't different kinds of objects. Even tables are just arbitrary pipes, dashes and pluses. I can hack together something that looks kind of like a row in a table, say, "Emacs, please format that to look pretty" and then carry on hacking away. Dates are just text until I tell Emacs, "Oh, please make that date tomorrow". And then it's just text again. I can do crazy things like write some code in one and think, "Oh I need to remember to check that constant to see if it's right". Then I hit a button and I've got a TODO with either a link to the line of the code, or even a link with the _context_ of the code so that stays valid if the line moves. When I am going through my TODOs, I press a button and my TODO list pops up. I press another button and it jumps to my code. I edit it. Rinse and repeat. It's all just normal text in my normal text editor. I don't think there is anything at all like it.

<comment><USER26> Thank you. Well written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> All this is good but then those notes aren't accessible on my phone

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a few apps that support org-mode. For Android there is [http://www.orgzly.com/](http://www.orgzly.com/) For iOS there is [https://beorgapp.com/](https://beorgapp.com/) I think there are a few more but those are the ones I see people talk about.

<comment><USER28> My problem is with the corporate firewall that inhibits me from using dropbox/box/etc. to sync notes between my mobile phone and the work laptop. Just yesterday I tried to connect through Github (which I can access, for the time being), and running a "Working Copy" (an iphone app) webdav server that shares the github repo clone in the phone with Beorg. It was completely unusable. Does anyone have an alternate suggestion, perchance?

<comment><USER29> Setup a hook that exports to HTML and send the file to your mail? Not an elegant solution, but gets the job done.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Stops Accepting Bitcoin in Windows Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/14/microsoft_stops_accepting_bitcoin_in_windows_store/ <comment><USER2> What a weak move my Microsoft :/ Somewhat understandable, but a ignorant statement.</comment>


Learn the Capitals (or Flags) of the World by answering multiple questions - <AUTHOR> http://flag-icon-css.lip.is/game/ <comment><AUTHOR> The project is open source and it's main goal is to provide the SVG flags of all countries, for a primary (but not limited to) use in web apps: [https://github.com/lipis/flag-icon-css](https://github.com/lipis/flag-icon- css)</comment>


They rap for funding (startup hustle) - <AUTHOR> http://undrip.com/rap/

<comment><USER3> It seems nowadays that each startup team is trying to out "quirky" one another. Everyone is screaming about how unique and edgy they are. "Yeah, our brogrammer is a world class Japanese chef from France, who enjoys Native American artwork when he's not kite surfing in Togo! #gnarlykittens"

After awhile it all just come across as obnoxious. Just tell me what you make and why I need to use it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not to be mean, but I got bored about 20 seconds in and now I'm not sure what your company does or sells.

<comment><USER5> I was about to say this. Was painful to watch all the way through, and their about page has absolutely nothing about what they do.

At best, I am guessing that they're yet another filter for social noise.

Seriously, not trying to be mean. I love the positive energy, but come on, give me something to work with guys!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the founder sold his previous startup to Chegg, and undrip is only looking for seed level funds right now why not boot strap? Or has angel funding become little more than trading equity for credibility to eventually move onto a larger Series A?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I'm the Founder/CEO. This was more about exposure/hiring than it was about funding. However, we're definitely looking for great investors. Not about money, about people and what they can bring.

<comment><USER7> I made the jump into Twitter just a few days ago and because of my initial overenthusiastic following spree, I felt swamped and deluged within my first week! Just tonight I ended up already wading through the crowd of people I follow and un-following them much like I did a year into using Facebook! Troublesome people that presented a huge conundrum were Guy Kawasaki - <USER2> guy with cool things to share, but ultimately just too much of it was too irrelevant! If only there was a filter... _cough_ _cough_ Ironically, I came across Undrip's rap video soon after.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So much awesome. I know alot of HNers may view this as another sign that we are "in a bubble" but I think this is just good old fashioned creativity. Im rooting for you undrip.

</comment><comment><USER9> Enjoyed the video. Loved the second rapper(Ryan Johnson???). Seem to be willing to hustle to get attention which is great.

But I still don't understand what undrip does. Their about page has a bunch buzzwords which makes me think they are in the social media, content consumption space. But seriously guessing here. They don't have a mission statement either. Come on guys. Give us something.

</comment><comment><USER10> These tools remind me of the Icy Hot Stuntaz: <http://stuntaz.cjb.net/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Aaargh - it's painful but I can't stop watching it! My bet is your videos make it in front of the angels. Though I didn't really try to find out what the company was about - maybe a CTA at some point early in the video?

<comment><USER12> I agree with the clearer CTA- you'll get the attention of these guys, but if they don't know what you're doing within 30 seconds, they may get frustrated or bored. Your about page is pretty vague as well. Some tightly done copy at the top of both of these pages would work wonders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not bad; you should consider using rap format for demoing at conferences! However, I also still don't know what Undrip is; it would make your flow much tighter if you incorporated your pitch into it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Very well done. I like the second rapper. I would have liked to see more computers in the video. And maybe even some matrix code effects...

</comment><comment><USER15> If undrip doesn't work out, one of you guys may have a fallback. I was hoping for the value proposition during the rap.

</comment><comment><USER16> So far, the only VC that saw the video is Ron Conway.

</comment><comment><USER17> check out the ron conway rap: <http://undrip.com/rap/ron-conway-rap/>

</comment><comment><USER18> white, fat boy should quit his day-job and rap full-time. for real.

<comment><USER17> he does already! see <http://www.facebook.com/cswsprovo> and @DavidFPeterson just a friend who helped us out for the rap

<comment><USER18> nice! ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know about the product, but you guys have a good t-shirt taste.

</comment><comment><USER20> The second guy actually has some pretty decent flow. notbad.gif.</comment>


E-Receipt, what's holding it back? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sami-lehtinen.net/blog/e-receipt-whats-holding-it-back

<comment><USER2> Brilliant idea - but I cannot sign up to the google group

Please drop me a line - contacts in profile

</comment><comment><USER2> seems that [http://ereceipts.co.uk](http://ereceipts.co.uk) is doing well - backed by ex-Tesco chairman, apparently trailing with five big uk supermarkets - the standard may be defacto - but not open ...

</comment><comment><USER3> retailer adoption...</comment>


Turn Off TV: Why Does US TV Book Bad Guys? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18742919 <comment><USER2> It sells ads.</comment>


Surprisingly few tips for traveling have changed since medieval times - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/what-tips-for-traveling-have-changed-since-medieval-times-surprisingly-few/2015/09/03/39fa7194-482d-11e5-846d-02792f854297_story.html <comment><USER2> The author has an entire blog full of old advice, and it's worth checking out:

[http://www.askthepast.blogspot.com/](http://www.askthepast.blogspot.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm from Malta. This reminded me of a certain incident in the local news several years ago:

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/feb/18/davidward](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/feb/18/davidward)

<comment><USER4> From Delta Air Lines policy for pet travel:[0]

        What methods of transport does Delta Air Lines provide for my pet?

        * Travel in the passenger cabin.
        * Checked as baggage in pressurized and temperature controlled area of your aircraft.
        * Shipped as cargo in pressurized and temperature controlled area.
        ...
        Does my pet qualify for travel in the passenger cabin?

        Pets that meet the following qualifications can travel in the passenger cabin:
        ...
        * Only domesticated dogs, cats, and birds are allowed.

Chicken = domesticated bird. But maybe they mean budgies etc ;)

[0] [http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Delta_Airlines/pets.php](http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Delta_Airlines/pets.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "No one should travel who does not desire hardship, trouble, tribulation and risk of death."

c'mmon, this is 2015!

<comment><USER6> Maybe you travel wrong. Join me on one of my trips and we talk again ;-).

"All the pathos and irony of leaving one's youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time." – Paul Fussell

"A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it." – John Steinbeck</comment></comment>


Reputation Patterns  - <AUTHOR> http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/social/people/reputation/ <comment><USER2> These in general come from the book 'Building Web Reputation Systems', which covers the topic in a good bit more detail, as well as when and why certain approaches work to solve more specific problems (public karma, 5 star ratings..)

Definitely worth looking at.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ridiculously simplistic, though worth looking through if you've never heard of the concept of "points" or "badges" or "awards" in an online community.</comment>


Ask HN: Did YC accept anyone without an idea this round? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I wager that PG won't even reply to this one, unless to prove me wrong. It seems like one of those things that might not scale.

<comment><USER3> You hit the nail on that head. Perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone knows how the the team without an idea is doing?

<comment><USER5> I recently spoke with someone who was accepted to the S12 batch without an idea. He's currently pivoted from what he was working on during that session, but is about to launch a new product. Sorry to be vague on the details, but I feel that if he wanted people to know what he was up to, then he would post here himself.

<comment><USER4> Thanks a lot! I'm super interested in the outcome of these teams

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One group, I think.

</comment><comment><USER7> It would also be interesting if they publish team size distribution vs. previous years, since many of the S12 problems seemed to have been team related. Would this mean more single-founder teams, or more teams with a founder with controlling interest, or more teams with brothers (like Stripe), ...?

<comment><USER8> that would be interesting. My app got rejected was with my brother + best friend. very skilled engineer and designer willing to leave their jobs at a certain top tier search firm!

<comment><USER7> I wonder what the psychology is for founding teams.

Clearly, at one point on the spectrum, it's people who meet a second before the application purely for the purpose of working on the application to fake their way into YC.

At the other end on the spectrum, people who have known each other for all their lives (say, twin brothers).

The former might on paper have great credentials (if I were going to pick a "fake" cofounder, I'd pick someone who has already built something similar, has a lot of accomplishments, etc., all things being equal. And, to a small extent, being able to convince someone like that to join your team kind of means something.

The latter would potentially join your startup even if he didn't believe in the idea, or have any real competence, etc., just out of familial obligation. But maybe siblings had a lot of similar experiences and both got interested in and involved with a certain tech early on.

It's even more complex with spouses. Say I'm a great musician, and I spend all my time with musicians, and really respect musicians and music. It's entirely likely my choice of spouse would be another incredibly talented musician. But, it's also likely that if people are married for other reasons, one might want to do a startup and then pull along a less-qualified spouse.

I think the sweet spot is somewhere beyond "met for just this project", at least if it hasn't been going for a long time, but "met for professional reasons", not purely social or familial ones. But it's probably a pretty flat region after that, where individual variations matter a lot more.

<comment><USER9> I think the psychology of co-founding a startup is so drastically different than any other social interaction that it's hard to predict what will happen if the team hasn't worked for a while together.

We were 3 good friends "without an idea" in the summer batch. One I'd known my entire life (literally we met as babies). The other I knew for 6 months, but was a friend of the former for over 7 years.

Very good credentials amongst us, and we had fun together just talking about ideas, playing tennis, golf etc. But ultimately when it came down to being "in the trenches" there were aspects of each other's personalities, decision- making style, work ethic, commitment etc that led to us being one of the teams that acrimoniously split up.

None of us likes any of us anymore, sadly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Best music to code to? - <AUTHOR>

What music does every body enjoy coding to? I am about to start a project where i need to headphones on and to be left alone for a few days. I need some good music to go with it. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> [http://8tracks.com/musicbeats/writing-lines-of-code- ambient](http://8tracks.com/musicbeats/writing-lines-of-code-ambient)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://soundcloud.com/floatingpoints/sets/shadows](https://soundcloud.com/floatingpoints/sets/shadows)</comment>


Is Adrian Peterson a Liability? A running back's fumble rate distribution - <AUTHOR> http://www.advancednflstats.com/2010/02/is-adrian-peterson-liability.html

<comment><USER2> Apologies for the tangent, but are there any HN users who are interested in sports analytics?

<comment><USER3> Very much so. I've been going through The Book[1] trying to work out some of the calculations using clojure as an exercise in learning both topics. Baseball has an incredibly rich data and deep knowledge ecosystem that is fascinating (and sometimes profitable, just ask Nate Silver).

At my day job[2] we don't do much in the way of advanced analytics, but it's on the wishlist. I'm veering into shameless plug territory now, but if you are interested in this stuff, please check out our Saber blog[3]. Also if you are a smart dev, come work with us :)

[1] <http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/>

[2] <http://www.sbnation.com/>

[3] <http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/>

<comment><USER2> Hi Dusty do you have an email address?

<comment><USER3> Hiya. I just filled in some info in my profile, you can find it there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've noticed a couple of teams--like the mid-00's Packers and Seahawks--where it didn't seem to actually matter who their running back was. Even their third and fourth string backs would perform well. This is when I started to suspect that a team's blocking--the offensive line and fullback--made more of a difference to the running game than the running back. Not that you don't need a good running back, but that the ability to run fast enough and go through the holes created by the blockers are dime-a-dozen type talents and it's not difficult to find someone to fit in that role.

If this is true, than probably the single most important thing that actually hinges on the running back himself is fumble rate. (On the other hand, Adrian Peterson seems like one of the rare running backs whose actual talent extends beyond, say, an Ahman Green or Shaun Alexander.)

<comment><USER3> This will be one of the questions that will always follow Barry Sanders. Can you imagine him behind, say, Emmitt Smith's line? Or would hit have mattered, given Sanders style of running (unbelievable field vision, lateral movements)?

<comment><USER5> This is one of the reasons for Sanders' early retirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related to this specific article, I wonder how statistically significant these figures are, because the sample size (number of touches) is comparatively small. This has a lot to do with the reason baseball defensive metrics aren't as good as batting metrics: a player gets a lot more chances at the plate than he does in the field, and they're much easier to evaluate.

</comment><comment><USER7> So the conclusion was that based on the analysis he's not a liability...for the Vikings. But as a pretty serious fantasy football owner, I wonder if — given the fact that Peterson was the consensus #1 overall pick last season — he was a liability to his fantasy owners. You pretty much have to play your number 1 pick (and a homerun hitter like Peterson) every week, but were there less glamorous, middle-tier running back choices that ended up giving their owners a better chance of winning each week (assuming negative points for fumbles lost in the scoring system)?

Yes, I _do_ want to be the Billy Beane of fantasy football.

<comment><USER8> I owned Peterson, and although he didn't live up to the #1 spot, he did live up to the first round. He was usually the highest scoring player on my team even with 3 fumbles in a game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another issue with Peterson is that his yards per attempt have steadily declined: 2007 - 5.6 ypa (2nd among backs) 2008 - 4.8 ypa (5th among backs) 2009 - 4.4 ypa (24th among backs)

In the playoffs this year he really declined (3.6 per attempt)

Source: ESPN ( To qualify, a player must have at least 6.25 attempts per team's games played)

<comment><USER10> I don't think this is necessarily something to put on Peterson. Over the years, the Vikings have added more offensive weapons, notably a better receiving core and aquarterback. With Brett Favre there this year, the Vikings had a passing threat that was lacking with Tavaris Jackson, so Peterson wasn't relied on as much to run the offense (This is similar in San Diego with LT - his role is reduced now that Philip Rivers has become a better qb). I also think that defenses are more prepared for him than in previous years, when he was first breaking out on the scene.

<comment><USER11> I think a two-dimensional attack should, if anything, increase his efficiency since defenses can't cheat and load the box with eight guys every down.</comment></comment></comment>


Is an adversarial justice system compatible with good science? - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/07/is-an-adversarial-justice-system-compatible-with-good-science <comment><AUTHOR> Our court system produces wildly different outcomes for rich and poor defendants in part thanks to its susceptibility to charlatans: wealthy defendants can hire not only crack lawyers, but highly charismatic "experts" who can appear persuasive no matter how tenuous or even bogus their reasoning.</comment>


Clash: A modern, functional, hardware description language - <AUTHOR> https://clash-lang.org/ <comment><USER2> I have a couple of articles on my website about my experiences with (previous versions of) Clash if anyone wants some examples. I used Clash in a processor design class and it was amazing. We had some "competitions" between the various CPUs in the class (e.g. performance and correctness given some ISA spec) and I was able to create one of the top few CPUs with only a small fraction of the effort of my classmates using a "traditional" HDL like VHDL or Verilog.

Slides from a clash talk I gave in probably 2016:

[https://yager.io/talks/CLaSH.pdf](https://yager.io/talks/CLaSH.pdf)

Simple non-pipelined CPU (I've been meaning to release part 2 for years but never got around to it):

[https://yager.io/CPU/CPU1.html](https://yager.io/CPU/CPU1.html)

SKI calculus processor on an FPGA:

[https://yager.io/HaSKI/HaSKI.html](https://yager.io/HaSKI/HaSKI.html)

A superscalar out-of-order processor I built for a CPU design class at UT Austin:

[https://github.com/wyager/Lambda17](https://github.com/wyager/Lambda17)

(Take a look at Hardware.hs to see some of the cool parametric stuff you can do.)

Like I said, these are all with old versions of Clash - it's changed in the last few years, but I haven't done any HDL projects recently.

</comment><comment><USER3> The biggest pain point of "programming" hardware is the vendor tools. Imagine if all modern languages from Swift to Rust, from Python to Fortran, will all compile to C. The same situation is with HDLs - most of them compile to Verilog (some to VHDL). The world needs an open standard to rule them all - low-level HDL IR, that like LLVM can give birth to the endless variations of the cool languages, while giving them all flexibility they need. The synthesizing part would have to be written only once too. I proposed joining efforts[1] on building such a language either from scratch or based on something existing.

[1] [https://github.com/SymbiFlow/ideas/issues/19](https://github.com/SymbiFlow/ideas/issues/19)

<comment><USER4> There was some interesting discussion between the LLHD[1] and MLIR[2] folks about just this topic recently[3]. My takeaway: modeling behavioral HDL semantics in the IR is a huge mess that has to account for all of the complexity in the existing HDL landscape. However, there is hope for modeling structural HDL semantics in an IR that could be the target for many languages.

You mentioned LLVM, and I think of MLIR as sort of a successor to LLVM. I'm hopeful that a low-level HDL IR is standardized as an MLIR dialect, so the compiler ecosystem and the hardware ecosystem can start to unite.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22825107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22825107) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22429107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22429107) [3] [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x7B0IRdcJ5JBQvfHbPUBcShbTFC...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x7B0IRdcJ5JBQvfHbPUBcShbTFCMlrbe/view)

<comment><USER5> I love the idea of LLHD. Also LNAST. There are some great ideas here.

[https://github.com/masc-ucsc/livehd](https://github.com/masc-ucsc/livehd)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was another language kinda similar to this (functional language HDL), called Bluespec. It was originally very Haskell-like, but at some point had to change its syntax to a more C-like version because of its unpopularity with hardware engineers. I had to use the newer version at my Computer Architecture class, and although the experience was way better than Verilog, it had very little documention/tutorials (being a commercial product and having almost no users), which made understanding the more complex parts of the language really hard.

Nowadays Chisel seems to be the best bet if you want a sane Verilog alternative (with functional-lang features) for your HDL needs. ([https://www.chisel-lang.org/](https://www.chisel-lang.org/)) It was originally a transpiler to Verilog, but recently it began to have its own IR code (FIRRTL) for optimization purposes.

<comment><USER7> As I recall, Chisel is a very shallowly embedded HDL, which is completely different from the approach used by Clash. Clash is a subset of Haskell that is _directly_ compiled to a hardware representation, which has some unique advantages and disadvantages. One big advantage of Clash's approach is that you can code from any regular Haskell library as long as the code is within the subset of Haskell supported by Clash. E.g. you could import `Linear.V3` and have access to a 3-dimensional vector type with all the operators and stuff already defined, and this would compile to hardware no problem.

It turns out that Haskell's non-strict semantics are a shockingly close match for the semantics of hardware (the only difference I'm aware of being pretty obscure, having to do with zero-width busses).

<comment><USER8> > It turns out that Haskell's non-strict semantics are a shockingly close > match for the semantics of hardware

Doesn't Haskell need automatic memory management in order to implement higher- order functions, that being perhaps the most prominent difference in semantics between Haskell/Ocaml and Rust? Is Clash limited to first-class functions ala C?

<comment><USER7> No, clash supports higher-order functions just fine. The only thing it can't really represent is general recursion. You need to use type-constrained recursion. Clash isn't fully generalized yet so it provides some nice bounded recursion primitive.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but the Clash reference documentation states that it doesn't do behavioral synthesis. It structurally maps the representation of the supported subset of fully-applied Haskell functions to either combinational or sequential circuits, depending on whether the function takes a `Signal`-type argument. The fact that the representation is shared leads to many advantages compared to e.g. Chisel, but this is definitely a "shallow embedding" approach.

<comment><USER7> "Signal" is just [] without an empty constructor (i.e. a lazy corecursive stream). As far as your Haskell code is concerned, there is nothing special whatsoever about signals, and indeed it's just a normal data type until the Clash-specific Core layer kicks in.

I think I mixed up "shallow" and "deep" embedding - by "deep embedding", I meant to say that there is no secondary AST manually defined for the embedded language, but I think that is actually a shallow embedding. Looks like I can't correct my earlier comment.

Only the top level function has to be first order - you can use higher order functions within the body of your code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, I continue to ask myself what the advantage should be, if there are synthesizable subsets for more and more programming languages, to be able to develop hardware with them. The people who absolutely want to use a functional programming language for this can already use e.g. Chisel or SpinalHDL, for example, which are based on Scala. So now there is yet another HDL based on Haskell (don't forget e.g. Bluespec). There are also HDL based on OCaml or ML. But I think it is not wrong to assume that the task of developing error free hardware hasn't become easier hence.

<comment><USER10> > So now there is yet another

Clash has been around for a while now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think this builds right now, but it's my favorite example of a project really leveraging the expressivity of Clash to do hardware design: [https://github.com/cbiffle/cfm](https://github.com/cbiffle/cfm)

</comment><comment><USER5> I hate to rag on new stuff, especially in the HDL space where I think it's desperately needed, but the syntax of this language is so foreign that I think it's extremely unlikely you really get a large amount of adoption. We can't even get Verilog 1995 people to switch to 2001, let along SystemVerilog.

<comment><USER7> > I hate to rag on new stuff

Haskell/ML syntax is hardly "new stuff".

> I think it's extremely unlikely you really get a large amount of adoption

Clash is used to manufacture production hardware by at least one of the top 5 largest companies in the world.

<comment><USER5> I know it's not new stuff, go look at Bluespec and their open-source HDL.

For most hardware designers though, it is new. Most hardware designers are EEs and not CS people. I know many designers that do not even want to learn a programming language like python which has a relatively easy to read syntax. ML/Functional Programming languages require a completely different mindset, just like hardware designing does if you come from programming languages.

I think the world is ripe for a new HDL. But the right foundations need to be there. It needs first class support with existing HDLs (VHDL, Verilog/SV). It needs to integrate with all the existing EDA tools in mixed language environments, and be easy to debug. Debugging is a huge problem in the "new HDL" space right now. Go look at Chisel. Google used it to design some of if not all of their TPU, but their Verif engineers had a really difficult time with the debug because it compiled to verilog, and then was difficult to reason about.

I have so many thoughts on this space and I want to make it better. It would be an absolute dream to develop a new HDL that enabled Hardware designers and Verif engineers to have all the superpowers that SWEs have in today's world. Being both proficient in various programming languages and Verilog/SV/UVM/etc, its so wild to see how big of a gap there is in productivity tools. Essentially SWEs have all the good stuff.

<comment><USER9> > _I have so many thoughts on this space and I want to make it better_

Have you written them down somewhere? Would be interested. Are you a HW designer?

> _It would be an absolute dream to develop a new HDL that enabled Hardware > designers and Verif engineers to have all the superpowers that SWEs have in > today 's world_

Wasn't that the intention of SystemVerilog?

<comment><USER5> Yeah I've been capturing these ideas over the last couple years. I probably have a stream of consiousness document like 30 pages long. I just haven't really had the time to organize it and start figuring out what the "API" would look like.

> Wasn't that the intention of SystemVerilog?

I believe it was, but it clearly didn't pan out. A few obvious reasons:

\- the language has way too much bolted onto it, if you compare SV vs C++ or even Java, there are a mindboggling ~250 keywords. Nobody can memorize all of that. If you don't have unbelievable lint/code aid tools (which we don't...), how on earth is someone supposed to be productive? Its way too much complexity. C++ has something like 80ish? C# maybe 100ish? The fat needs to be trimmed.

\- Verif engineers and designers work differently, so why does a verif engineer use the same language as a designer? They probably shouldn't just like its a no-no to have a designer verify their own block. Design and Verification need to have very clear cut lines from a language standpoint, and in SV they really dont

\- I think people made the wrong decision trying to Bolt on all these OO features inspired by the success of Java and OOP in the early 2000s. HDL design should be more functional than OO. And it should definitely be seperated from a verif lang.

I have so many more thoughts, everything from language syntax, to GUIs, to code analysis, etc. I should probably share it somewhere. Maybe I should just build it. I don't know.

<comment><USER9> Agree. SV is even harder to parse and validate than C++ which is quite an achievement. I think they also made a wrong decision by replacing the Verilog by the SV standard.

But there are still a lot of useful parts in SV. I thought of creating a kind of "Verilog 20" which just incorporates the useful synthesizable features from SV including parts of SVA and interfaces. I would even consider to leave out parts of Verilog which are not synthesizable and use a different language for verification altogether (e.g. C++ or Python as e.g. with Cocotb).

I recently came accross Wirth's Lola and even built an IDE for it ([https://github.com/rochus-keller/LolaCreator](https://github.com/rochus- keller/LolaCreator)), but its practicality and usefulness is still to be demonstrated and the compiler has issues.

<comment><USER5> I haven't heard of this one. Will take a look. I've been cataloguing everything I've found HDL wise and maybe one day I'll put out a potential spec API for what "the best parts" could look like. Similar to the Rust "inspired by" parts.

I completely agree with the Verilog20 idea. That's the way forward 100%.

Cocotb is awesome in my brief usage so far. The thing that remains to be seen though is performance benchmarking. It would be great to compare the sim runs of two identical tests, one in UVM and one in Cocotb. I highly doubt it could match the performance of a well written UVM test, and this becomes an issue as your SOC gets bigger.

<comment><USER9> > I haven't heard of this one

Here is the specification: [https://inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/Lola/index.html](https://inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/Lola/index.html)

I don't yet have representative experimental data; the language is designed for the synthesis of synchronous FPGA designs and thus avoids some of the issues Verilog and other HDL suffer from. But it's too early for me to give a recommendation.

> The thing that remains to be seen though is performance benchmarking

Agree. I often use Verilator and I also experiment with LuaJIT (see [https://github.com/rochus-keller/LjTools](https://github.com/rochus- keller/LjTools)) which is one of the fastest VM available; it intend to use it for HW simulation and debugging too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ok, now can we have automatic Clash-to-Linux-dts (Device Tree Source) generation? So we can port Linux to a new board with a click? That would be something. And it might drive adoption of Clash, just for that integration advantage.

<comment><USER7> I think you might be skipping a few layers of abstraction there, but you could have something like a parametric PCIe or I2C core that would autogenerate both the hardware (de)serialization logic and the Linux-side driver logic. If your driver was written in Haskell, you could even use the exact same library on the hardware side and the software side. So let's say you have an FPGA card in a PCIe slot - with a change to a single file, you could change the wire protocol on both the Linux side and the FPGA side.

<comment><USER12> I think this is just the abstraction needed to generate the device tree. Pinouts, bus address strapping, modes - all are/could be specified in the Clash and emitted thru some template or schema. I guess that's the missing part - the dts schema. But its the closest we've ever got!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of Cryptol [https://cryptol.net](https://cryptol.net) which can be compiled into VHDL. It is a more general language than its description as cryptographic DSL suggests.

</comment><comment><USER14> A thread from 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516217)</comment>


"We onboard our employees by asking them to buy cryptocurrencies." - <AUTHOR> https://www.covalenthq.com/blog/employee-onboarding-buying-crypto-currency/ <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure this is illegal. Covalent is inducing Americans to buy a security and guaranteeing them from losses, both regulated activities.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The culture around cryptocurrencies can be a little insular – so we're sharing our onboarding guide that teaches you to buy cryptocurrencies step-by-step. I think it's broadly applicable regardless of what you think about the viability of crypto.</comment>


Productivity tips, tricks and hacks for academics - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints-hacks-tricks-for-grad-students-academics/

<comment><USER2> Good advice. Transaction costs and, in particular, startup costs are some of the most difficult things I face in my (graduate student) day-to-day. Simply getting up to the whiteboard can be difficult.

I'm definitely going to start using a reference managing website.

I've been using Ad Block Plus to keep myself out of Reddit and Google Reader at work. (Sadly, I think the time has come to add HN, as well.) The method works, and I've been tempted only once or twice to circumvent the blocks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In short, mold your life so that the path of least resistance is the path of maximum productivity</comment>


Scan a book in five minutes? $199 'Smart scanner' with foot pedal and WiFi - <AUTHOR> http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/scan-a-book-in-five-minutes-199-smart-scanner-with-foot-pedal-and-wifi-support/ <comment><USER2> For a far more impressive scanner, developed by a Google engineer and including automated page turning see: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/13/3639016/google-books- scan...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/13/3639016/google-books-scanner- vacuum-diy)

I believe there is a far more detailed breakdown of the project floating around somewhere.

It is possible, but not clear to me, that Google use this for their own book scanning project - Google Books.

<comment><USER3> Jason Scott says it destroys books:

[http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4695](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4695)

<comment><USER4> Ok... and is there some place where he explains why he believes that to be the case? The Google presentation explicitly mentions that a feature of the scanner is that it _doesn 't_ destroy books.

<comment><USER5> There's really nothing to go on except the small quip from the author, but it's not hard to imagine a scenario in which the machine has no way of adjusting for more delicate sources.

Watching the video from [http://linearbookscanner.org](http://linearbookscanner.org) on how the scanner works, I'm guessing the "doesn't destroy books" pitch is a response to other scanners where you're supposed to slice off the spine of the book and feed the cut pages into it. Given that it's just a vacuum pulling the pages through a slit in the apparatus, I can easily imagine much more delicate texts getting torn pretty easily using the device.

The FAQ on the Linear Book Scanner page itself admits that it does have restrictions on the type of pages and book dimensions it can work with, and that it has a relatively high damage rate (from the aforementioned website FAQ, "Out of 50 books tested, 45% had one or two of their pages either torn or folded.")

The LBS is probably fine for more modern texts that just haven't been digitized, but I too would be wary about automating any rare or delicate text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting product, but not really much of an improvement in speed if you have to do the page turns yourself.

The foot pedal for scanning saves a tiny bit of time, but it is still cumbersome to scan a whole book.

Also strange to emphasize MIPS CPU which should not be better than your average cheap smartphone ARM.

So, you are saving some time over regular scanner(been there done that), but it is still not practical for say 100 books.

If they had figured out a clever way to do the page turns this would have been a winner.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> See [http://www.diybookscanner.org](http://www.diybookscanner.org) for prior work and discussion of hardware/software in book scanners.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Build your own digital library"?

For a single book, sure, makes sense, but this totally doesn't scale. Perhaps a nice gadget to have at a hackerspace, but then again you can probably just build this yourself.

<comment><USER8> This depends very much on your time/money tade-off, as well as the availability of texts, and the opportunities for sharing of scanned works.

In many cases,books are nonlonger in print, scanning is among the few ways to get a copy. Or you need a small number of works to fill out a library which is otherwise available online. Services such as Library Genesis make sharing works among individual scanners and scanner communities far easier.

For regions of the world with little access to printed materials, tools such as this are a godsend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This will all come down to the software. the folks at [http://www.diybookscanner.org/](http://www.diybookscanner.org/) have been using point and shoot digital cameras to make scanners for years so the hardware isn't the problem. The problem is the OCR and dealing with page curl. Without something to flatten the page, the quality of OCR goes down a lot. The video says they have solved it but I am skeptical. Good OCR software like Omnipage or Finereader usually sells for over $100 to start with and they don't do that well with curved pages so if this product really can then it would be worth the $200 to someone serious about book scanning. I would have to see some real proof that they can do high accuracy OCR before spending money on it though.

<comment><USER10> I have seen page-curl solved with two high-megapixel cameras; you can use parallax on the text to create a 3d-map of the page from which correcting page curl is quite easy to do. The problem is that you lose resolution in the highly-curled areas, so while a 1-2MP camera is plenty for perfectly flat pages, 16-20MP is better for non-flat scans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> here's their indiegogo page: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/czur-scanner- build-your-o...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/czur-scanner-build-your- own-digital-library#/)

Previous techcrunch article posted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10500915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10500915)

</comment><comment><USER12> another option that's roughly $1 for 100 pages:

[http://1dollarscan.com/pricing.php](http://1dollarscan.com/pricing.php)

This is a good option depending on your needs (e.g., only select books, smaller collection, you don't want to do any of the work, etc.)

<comment><USER13> Hm - interesting. What stops students from sending in their textbooks to have scanned and shared with fellow students?

<comment><USER12> Not much besides the textbook gets destroyed, so no more margin notes or highlights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems a modern camera-phone (my Samsung S4, and the S4 before it, takes crystal clear photos of text) and some clever mounting could easily replace the hardware setup: The software seems to be the interesting component here -- does it or something like it exist alone?

</comment><comment><USER15> I write all my design notes, sketches etc on 5mm A4 square pads, this would be an incredible devices for me since I could scan them in really quickly once I'm done with them and I'd have a permanent record of all my stuff without a massive pile of pads to shlep through.

Could also attach metadata to them (project name etc).

I considered building something like this a while back as a side project but couldn't find a high enough resolution camera I could connect to a raspberry pi, this is 16MP, the rpi camera is only 5MP so that was a problem.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was looking into similar products when I found [http://booksorber.com/](http://booksorber.com/)

I already have the DSLR, tripod and floodlight so it was the natural choice for me. I guess this one is good if you have none of that.

</comment><comment><USER17> In the Cruz video there is a quick mention of a cloud service. Is the OCR'ing done in the cloud? Is the cloud necessary for the operation of the scanner? There is no need to spell out the privacy and security implications if that is the case.

</comment><comment><USER18> I built my own Digital Library in 2006-2008 for Graduate School. It was very handy and I could have the books read to me in PDF while driving and search the text for research. Took about 30 minutes per hundred pages and I did it for HOURS. In Theology (Historical was my specific discipline) it was common for each class to be from 3,000 pages to 12,000 of reading (Yes a thousand pages a week basically for one class) I had to pick and choice which text was necessary and historically many of the books were public domain and I could download and grep them.

I would have cut off my left hand for this device. I bought a book scanner for this and it was worth it to me. The OCR was fairly weak but it was okay at the time.

</comment><comment><USER19> Next time they probably shouldn't use The Sound and the Fury as an example book. It's got quite a few n-words scattered throughout the text that happen to show up in the video.</comment>


WT.Social – News focused social network - <AUTHOR> https://wt.social/ <comment><AUTHOR> Maybe this is the beginning of the end of Facebook's supremacy.</comment>


Ask HN: Alternative funding options other than debt and equity - <AUTHOR> Looking through the various funding options for a startup between late seed and series b, your main options are taking on some debt to your balance sheet or dilute yourself.
I just read that Stripe Capital now allows you to receive a "cash advance" based upon sales (they can see this if you are a stripe customer). Does anyone have any views on taking a "cash advance" as a bridge between rounds or even an alternative funding option?
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Not about Stripe in specific as I haven't looked at their process yet, but some general information.

Advances are done on receivables generally and are not a way to bridge between rounds. The are a form of a short term loan and will be paid back as the receivables come in. The most common way this is done is you are given say 50-80% of the value of your receivables (varies depending on market and business), and any interest that might accrue during the collection period. Essentially this is selling your receivables for a discount to get cash now. I personally view this method as the equivalent of consumer payday loans, with much of the same high risk attributes.

Alternatively, there are some banks who will loan against receivables, using them as collateral, and that is almost always a better way to go as it is much less expensive overall, you still pay a higher interest rate generally but it is less crazy. But again, this is usually done as a cash flow management method, not to bridge between rounds. But this will be treated as debt against the company and likely the founders if you are small and haven't established solid credit for the company yet.

This is something I think most VC backed founders don't know, understand or learn. They don't establish credit with a couple of banks early enough when they have the funds. I always start building credit with banks early. Take $10k or some modest amount, use it as collateral for the bank to give you a loan in the companies name only. Then use the hell out of it paying it timely and never messing up. Then ask for a credit line increase to $20k or something along those lines after 6 months of solid use and good payments. Keep doing this over a couple of years and it is very easy to get $100-250k in line(s) of credit from banks and you only paid some modest interest on the way to get it. Then when you have the need that line is already there and it can be a huge difference maker, plus the key is you get rid of personal guarantees this way much faster than you would otherwise. It is crazy to me why startups don't do this regularly, it is very common in normal the SMB world and with serial entrepreneurs.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is brilliant information, and I appreciate you writing up such a great reply. A lot of food for thought.</comment></comment>


AngelList Raising A Big Round, To Be Valued at $150 Million Or More - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/14/angellist-to-be-valued-at-150-million-or-more/

<comment><USER2> Congrats to Naval and Team.

He was instrumental in helping me out when I was new to the game and of all the investors/angels I have dealt with, he is the most down to earth and awesome in many ways.

I feel very confident that he is one of the few guys in the valley who actually cares about helping entrepreneurs and is not in it for the cash. Angellist's success is proof of that.

<comment><USER3> It is also pretty awesome that Naval tries to help out startups outside the valley (and outside the US). In fact, not just Naval but other people in the team really want to help startups succeed and will reach out to you and talk to you. Great company DNA. Congratulations!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a huge fan of both Naval and AngelList. They have done so much already to make life better for entrepreneurs. I'm excited to see what they do with the cash infusion when it comes.

</comment><comment><USER5> AngelList is a game changer. Great idea and execution. I like how they are moving into other areas like startup recruitment and facilitating the financing process by providing standardised docs, electronic signatures, etc..

</comment><comment><USER6> Naval has been a prolific angel investor over the past few years. It would be interesting if some of this capital is used for direct investments out of AngelList. Years ago Sequoia did something like that by investing in YCombinator, and multiple venture funds created a similar structure when they invested in Betaworks.

</comment><comment><USER7> What is the correct way to use angel list if you're not currently fundraising? How should one engage on the site?

What is the strategy in deciding who to follow?

How do you attract people to follow you?

<comment><USER8> * Hire people at <https://angel.co/candidates>

* Browse jobs at <https://angel.co/talent>

* Follow markets you're interested in at <https://angel.co/markets>

* Apply to incubators (e.g. techstars)

Lots more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Must be easy to raise lots of funding from top investors when every investor worth is salt is a regular user of your product!

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if they raised the round on... AngelList? :P

</comment><comment><USER11> Any idea why they need $150m? Any thoughts on what that kind of cash would be used for? That could give you more employees than Twitter.

<comment><USER12> Unless I misunderstand things, a valuation of $150m means that the company is worth $150m, not that they'll be raising that much. Instead they'll be selling a shares of the company at that valuation, so if they sell 10% they'll get $15m.

<comment><USER13> Can you please share with us some resources (if you may have) on how these companies are valued? What metrics, parameters are taken into account while evaluating a company's worth?

Thanks!

<comment><USER14> As far as I understand it, it is based on educated guesswork. The idea is that you make a prognosis of where you think the company will be in the coming 5-10 years, and how much money they will be making at that time.

To aid your guesswork you look at the state of the market the company will be in, and if possible compare it to similar companies.

Once you think you have an idea of what the company will be making, you can calculate its worth. The worth of a company is usually between 5 and 15 times its yearly profits (depending on the market), multiplied by some risk factor.

Though in practice this is hard because early-stage companies invest most/all/more of their profits back in to the company to allow it to grow. And ofcourse estimating risk is also a very hard thing to do.

This is the process as far as I understand it. If you think I missed something or got something wrong please let me know. Also remember this is more a science than an art, most of these parameters come from experience and gut feeling.

<comment><USER13> Thank you for your valuable explanation :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mr2.js – Expose local servers to external networks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/txthinking/mr2.js <comment><USER2> This is a neat idea, but still requires running a local executable. To ease adoption, a web app would be better.

So how about a ngrok like service where you just open a page to forward local traffic ? The vulnerability we've seen yesterday, "A web page can see your local servers", suggests it's doable. The webrtc code needs to open a HTTP connection to the local server. JS code would proxy all requests coming through an external hostname to this local server. Is this doable ?

"I can see your local servers" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20028108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20028108)

<comment><USER3> Shameless self plug

That is the exact reason I made sish (ssi.sh). It uses ssh to do local port forwarding and can be self hosted with authentication. It's open source[0] and the only thing you need locally is SSH (which is included by default on most systems).

[0]: [https://github.com/antoniomika/sish](https://github.com/antoniomika/sish)

<comment><USER4> This is cool! I came up with something similar for hosting a few personal sites from my home network, except I did it the other way around - I built a docker image that does the SSH tunneling part. The external host is just a cheap droplet with GatewayPorts set to yes in the sshd config. A benefit of doing it this way is that you don't even have to expose localhost; I have Caddy running in another container in a docker-compose.yml file, so I can forward it directly with:

      ssh -R 80:caddy:80 -R 443:caddy:443

So all the networking happens within the network created by docker-compose.

<comment><USER3> Nice, that's something that's useful too. I think this is especially important as it pertains to home services/exposed things. I just wanted to build my own tools around it mainly for the virtual hosting/websockets support. Also I just find these things fun to write and figure out :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the purpose and/or novelty of this project? Just a simple http server? Or that it's js?

<comment><USER6> If you are developing a service / webapp on a local machine, you can use something like this (or ngrok) to make it publicly accessible to demo or test.

The novelty of this, I think, is that it provides both client and server programs. So that instead of paying for a service like ngrok, you can deploy this on your own. At least, that was my takeaway.

<comment><USER5> Ah interesting. I guess I've been spoiled with built-in apache all these years (and terrified of the idea of opening up LAN to public). Thanks!

<comment><USER6> The idea here is that you're exposing the LAN the minimum amount possible, and only indirectly... all public access is through the server component, which you could lock down as much or as little as possible.

<comment><USER5> Makes sense. I'd still 1000 times over pay for a cloud/virtual server from some provider (even if only for a day) than trust myself to configure something like that 100% securely.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Email Storm - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_storm <comment><USER2> I'm curious what your intention is with posting a wikipedia article. I've seen this link posted before -- are you looking for help with edits?</comment>


Ask HN: What college electives did you take that affected your life the most? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Law. Don't remember the exact name of the class, but it was taught by a real hardcore New York lawyer. He was tough on us, I didn't do so well, but I learned a lot about the real legal system, not some theoretical idealization of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Math in diverse cultures __*

Theater

Biology 1 + 2

Spanish 1 + 2

Sociology __*

Psychology __*

As a comp-sci student, these electives really got me interested in a lot of cool stuff.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hate to say this but... none. At George Mason University we were required to take a lot of electives, and many classes for no credit that only added to the cost of our education. They did keep employed numerous GTA's, however.

</comment><comment><USER5> A math elective called 'quality control and reliability'. Sounded super boring but I absolutely loved it. It was fascinating to see math in a business-y useful context.</comment>