Judge to Sikh Man: Remove "That Rag" or Go to Jail - <AUTHOR> https://www.aclu.org/blog/religion-belief-racial-justice/judge-sikh-man-remove-rag-or-go-jail <comment><USER2> The judge should be impeached by the house because clearly he does not have the character required for the job, nor the respect for the rule of law.

<comment><USER3> As much as I agree with you, the judge in the case is just bigoted, not stupid. Judges frequently punish individuals they don't like by putting them last on the docket. Somebody has to go last and it won't be recognized as punishment as a consequence, even though it really is. Most sessions can run 5 to 6 hours, that's quite a long time to wait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What can one say about these things? It's the 21st century and still we find police officers, of all people, behaving like middle school children.

Word of advice to all Mississippians, watch "Enemy Mine" and keep watching it until you _get it_.

</comment><comment><USER5> This, after many Americans called Miss America Nina Davuluri an Arab and a terrorist. This is very saddening to the say the least.

<comment><USER6> Free speech still stands. No one is stopping you from being stupid. Obviously when one is a public official, racism/idiocy in this situation comes into play and the person gets kicked out of office.Also being an Arab as far as I know is not a slur. One is not supposed to know every damn ethnicity that exists.

<comment><USER5> A mistake in identifying her ethnicity is fine. But what they did was call her an Arab to associate her with terrorism and thus insult her.

Free speech does exist. But do remember that any free country also stipulates that the freedom comes with the responsibility that you do not use your freedom to hurt others.

<comment><USER6> > Free speech does exist. But do remember that any free country also > stipulates that the freedom comes with the responsibility that you do not > use your freedom to hurt others.

There is a distinction between "hurting someone" as in "yelling fire" in a crowded theatre to "hurting someone" as in going on twitter and spouting random crap. Sure, you can sue for emotional damages or whatever if you please. However, it really is not the same thing. At least the way it works in America. I know that in some European countries, one's free speech rights are limited (e.g. when it comes to holocaust denial or whatever).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is this story related to HACKER News? I visit Hacker news to read interesting stories that are related to technology...

<comment><USER8> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

<comment><USER9> So essentially everything is on-topic since anyone who responds to a complaint regarding relevance will claim it gratified their curiosity.

<comment><USER10> > So essentially everything is on-topic

No. Which is why we have voting. "Everything" does not make the front page of HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really terrible to read.

I don't understand why it's on Hacker News though.

</comment><comment><USER12> A succinct embodiment of all that is wrong with the self-assumed authority of the modern nation-state, which, at its core, is based upon a monopoly of violence.

<comment><USER13> I don't really want to engage with this (it's a really common talking point and it won't change anyone's mind who didn't already agree) -- but your phrasing made me for the first time realize what exactly the alternative is: a free market for violence. Is that what you're advocating?

<comment><USER12> _I don 't really want to engage with this (it's a really common talking point and it won't change anyone's mind who didn't already agree)_

Oh right, and being trite with a false dichotomy is supposed to be more constructive? Sheesh. I suspect if you were, say, homeless or wrongly jailed for awhile then you'd come out far less dismissive of criticism of government.

<comment><USER13> No, seriously, it's such a common talking point that if you google the words "monopoly of force" you'll find the argument hashed out, extremely we'll, by both sides, thousands of times. So there's literally I reason to do it again, instead of just linking to one of those.

My question was also literal, not rhetorical: is a free-market for force what you intended to advocate? If not, what _are_ you advocating? Explain how force should be divvied up, if a monopoly is suboptimal.

<comment><USER12> I wasn't trying to roadmap a solution, merely highlight the excellence of the example. However, I'll bite. I believe states are essentially post-WWI (ie. passport era) anachronisms largely propped up through the UN and ISO who prevent new states from succeeding. I believe that any group should have the full right to succeed from the existing state at any time without any hard to obtain consent thereof. I also believe that geographical proximity to a state, for instance at birth, should not endanger one's capacity to travel beyond its borders or seek meaningful membership of other social groups providing competing avenues of service to its members. Critically, they should also have the ability to use any form of currency they see fit, and thus to subvert poorly performing governments by replacing present-era state mandated taxation systems with alternatives that may be more responsive to local conditions in terms of service provision and social priorities. Obviously, such changes will require significant re-organization within market and supply systems, however I also believe that owing to technological change we are entering an era in which such a direction, despite its complex and untested nature, is becoming more feasible.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Once Again, A Startup is Defined As …. : East Coast Blogging - <AUTHOR> http://eastcoastblogging.com/2008/09/18/once-again-a-startup-is-defined-as/ <comment><USER2> "Startup" doesn't actually mean anything, but I'll remind you that in the late '90s, there were "startups" on the NASDAQ with 8 figure market caps.

<comment><USER3> Yep, which brings me to my interpretation of a "start up".

In my mind, a startup as defined by an entrepreneur is a tech-focused company shooting for rapid growth, with a liquidity event in mind.

On the other hand, a small business is built to operate for a substantial time period (sometimes generational) while providing a steady and reliable stream of income. Business growth is typically a lot slower (often intentionally controlled) but more sure-footed.

A vast portion of the multi-millionaires in this country are small-business owners...

<comment><USER2> This is an idiosyncratically YC definition of the term "startup". Go to NEWS.GOOGLE.COM, search for "startup", and you'll see the term used in the mainstream press in pretty much every conceivable way.

The word "startup" to me distinguishes new independent nationwide business from corporate spinoffs, established niche companies, and regional businesses. It doesn't have any more meaning than that.

You can say startup means "shoot the moon" all you want, but I'm going to keep calling my company a bootstrapped startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everyone has their own definition of "startup" For a lot of the people here, it seems that startup==web2.0.

I tend more towards young companies that are building a hardware product (containing various proportions of hardware and software invention), when I hear "startup" I tend to think more along the lines of a new physical device.

To me, 2 guys collaborating on a project at night is not a "startup" it's an "experiment". And those 2 guys might think my job at a hardware-type company with a couple-dozen-million in VC dollars with an established process is "working for a big corporation". Doesn't really matter though, ultimately I think "Startup" is one of those words like "Pretty" it means something a little different to everyone, but the common denominator is that it tends to also be synonymous with "Good"...

</comment><comment><USER5> Depends on your perspective. To those who organize and put on TC50 (and who fund them), these are small fish and would fit the 'startup' definition easily.

For regular 'joes' like you and I who are struggling to get _any_ funding these are far, far beyond startups and represent success stories.

<comment><USER6> Getting funding does not mean you are a success story whatsoever.

I would say if these guys had millions in sales coming in - they are becoming success stories.</comment></comment>


'I'm Here to Help,' U.S. President-Elect Tells Tech Executives - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/technology/trump-tech-summit.html <comment><USER2> Given that Trump's economic theory is essentially based on repatriated profits being reinvested into the US, he presumably wants to talk with the companies that have those offshore piles of cash, not so much with Tech executives. This seems to me to also be the more plausible reason that Twitter wasn't invited.

Amazon $9 billion offshore Apple $230 billion held offshore Oracle $52 billion Microsoft $93 billion offshore cash Google $73 billion Intel $31 billion Cisco $41 billion offshore IBM $44 billion ...

The theory (that GS is pushing) is that this cash will be used for large scale share repurchases, and I assume that given Trump's appointments he agrees. 2017 should be a year where the effects of 2016 reinforced: narrower and narrower stock market gains, limited to huge companies.

<comment><USER3> I think there is a good chance of exactly this - cash repatriation in exchange for lower taxation on it, then using that tax revenue for partly funding the infrastructure projects that he's promised to create jobs.

But share repurchases is a lame way to spend the money - though I'm sure the people who get to choose will favour it because it boosts their compensation directly. Trump should ask for (at least some of it) to be used on more productive things like R&D, hiring, and VC deals on long term investments that are currently underfunded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's amazing how quickly Silicon Valley Valley falls into line. Before the election, there was a lot of tough talk about fighting against Trump. Now it's all about working with him.

<comment><USER5> Being in that meeting is not "falling into line". Everyone in that room knows who Trump is. There's no better way to know what needs to be done to fight him than to be on his good side.

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer"

Time will tell who's schmoozing and who isn't.

<comment><USER6> I don't think an individual could afford to miss it.

That's the host exerting power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was nothing but a ring-kissing ceremony only to boost Trump's own ego. The entire Trump campaign has been a sophomoric revenge fantasy exacted against the (actual) elites who have excluded him his entire life. Trump is not interested in solving problems—that's hard work without clear benefit to himself. This meeting was a public airing of the fact that he "won" and now those with real economic or social power need to kowtow to him. Having his children there only reinforces this. It would have been refreshing for someone—anyone—to object to Don, Eric, and Ivanka being present.

</comment><comment><USER8> Saying, "I'm here to help you folks do well" to the CEO's of American companies, is a lot like telling people you're smart. If you're really smart, if you're really here to help, you don't have to tell anyone, your actions will speak for you. This applies especially if you're the President Elect, it's kind of a given that you should probably try to help American companies; or maybe that's just me.

But hey, I guess it's better than saying, "I'm here to make you guys do poorly." And as everything Trump says, the proof will be in the pudding.

Oh, and once again, Ivanka is in the room. So it really does seem as if we'll have our first woman president (or co-president) after all.

</comment><comment><USER9> "I'm from the government, and I'm Here to Help"

<comment><USER10> Clearly Reagan's quote was a warning to us about a future GOP President...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Enablers will not be forgotten.....</comment>


Company wants us to write about "preventing the next Snowden" - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/05/doing-it-wrong-company-wants-us-to-write-about-preventing-the-next-snowden/ <comment><USER2> Why did The Washington Post just give this company free PR by posting the details and company name in the letter? I feel as though the company name should have been redacted... They just effectively got a paid article in The Washington Post for free, nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> _...but I wanted to offer a discussion with HyTrust, the cloud security automation company,_

Most convoluted attempt at guerrilla marketing I've ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER4> The best way to prevent the next Snowden is to follow ethical behavior.

<comment><USER5> "New technology helps stop insider threat [of exposing massive systematic abuse of power]"</comment></comment>


Prediction about self driving cars - <AUTHOR>

A self driving car will be used by a "terrorist" as a car bomb which will result in them being outlawed. This act will be carried out by agents for traditional oil based car companies to protect their interests. <comment><USER2> Air planes weren't outlawed and neither was religion.

Better prediction; if you thought the internet caught on fast, look at electric vehicles (sure they aren't 'there' yet but they are close & popular(trendy)). Now take an electric or even gas powered vehicle; and let- it-drive-itself. This will be wildfire to the public once it's pronounced safe and legal.

</comment><comment><USER3> I predict that in the near future right-wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.</comment>


'Grunt Funds' Are Trending in Startup Circles - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-18/grunt-funds-are-trending-in-startup-circles

<comment><USER2> There was an interesting recent HN discussion on perverse incentives: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4921954>.

I suspect there may be many unintended and harmful consequences with this kind of arrangement. By focusing the majority of the rewards (or the easiest and lowest-hanging way to achieve rewards) on hours worked, people are incentivized to sacrifice quality for quantity of work - working "dumb" instead of working "smart." People who loudly advertise their accomplishments (play the internal politics game) would get ahead in this system over people who instead focus all their energy on actual work.

And given that every person keeps track of his/her own hours, you're probably even more likely to have founders disagreeing with each other over hours worked. Even if you're fundamentally honest, you still have a strong bias towards overestimating your own contributions and # of hours worked.

<comment><USER3> Right. Why doesn't the owner just contract work to the others in exchange for cash / equity. Then you have a market that prices these things.

<comment><USER4> That's almost exactly what the dynamic split does. You bring in workers who are exchanging their time for equity, and the rate of exchange is determined by the market rate for that person. Afterwards, there's a formula to help determine the overall "theoretical grunt fund valuation." Of course, there are other inputs other than time, such as cash, relationships, equipment, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So instead of settling the matter early using something like a vesting schedule and then moving on, you're supposed to continually argue about what coefficients to assign to your contributions in some equity formula?

<comment><USER6> Why not? It's pretty clear non-developers have absolutely every idea how long and hard developers have to work to get "simple" features done. And developers totally can measure soft skills like marketing and such.

And in other news, those that can, do; those that can't, teach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a terrible idea. Hours clocked does not equal contribution. Founder vesting and 1 year cliffs exist for a reason.

<comment><USER8> I believe "hours clocked" was only one of the contributions included in the model.

From the article:

 _> "Basically, Moyer's idea assigns monetary value to every tangible and intangible contribution individuals make to a startup, from intellectual property and relationships to time and cash."_

<comment><USER9> This seems like a recipe for micromanagement and politics. Performance reviews are far less burdensome.

It also sounds like a way for an unethical person to cheat their employees out of equity by creating rules that are so complicated that they lose out due to some technicality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Many startups accomplish the same thing via the performance review process. Equity is usually in a state of constant dilution, so each employee's total effective slice the pie can be adjusted over time, to a certain extent, by giving them bigger or smaller supplemental grants. I suppose the events depicted in The Social Network could be considered an extreme case.

</comment><comment><USER11> Finding a business partner you trust and who shares a vision for the company and then getting the fuck on with it seems like a better approach.

I agree with @hmurakami on this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4940379>

<comment><USER4> Agreed, that's absolutely important, but life gets in the way. Things change, priorities change, and opportunities change. The dynamic split helps those who contributed early keep a stake even if they need to make a change later. It also gives an easy way to reward those who step in to contribute later. And this is done without absent partners potentially strangling equity from other contributors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you need something like this for your founding team, I think I'd reconsider the composition of said founding team...

</comment><comment><USER13> This would just increase competitiveness, arguments and gaming the system.

<comment><USER4> I believe it does the exact opposite. There's room to game any system, but in a dynamic split, if a team member is seen as gaming the system, there are simple ways to remedy that early. At the end of the day, there still needs to be a trust relationship between the members.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Instead of including hours in the equation, the team can a high level overview of action items and assign points based on their value to the team. Action items would include features, contacts, capital (funds and tools), and anything else that pops up at the meeting. Higher value items are automatically prioritized.

My concern would still be that the team is essentially guessing how valuable a given contribution is going to be beforehand. Even with industry experience it can be hard to know how much impact that new UI feature will have vs establishing the partnership with so-and-so.

I think some of the risk (of over incentivizing) could be mitigated by having only a set amount of equity distributed dynamically, and have a clear definition of the lock in point where the equity is no longer dynamic and is actually assigned. Also include your typical clauses for whether or not someone that left before lock-in point receives equity. This can be handled separately from what you get for bringing cash to the table.

</comment><comment><USER15> Time isnt necessarily the most important factor when considering a persons contribution. If i work faster thus produce more than a partner, or if they are stuck grinding out a problem that i may have breezed through they will be rewarded for their inadequacy, as opposed to an actual relevant contribution.

<comment><USER16> I'd agree that not everyone contributes the same value per hour. And as with any arrangement where you have self-reporting meeting monetary reward it will be necessary to have checks against bad actors. But those are problems that you deal with in any sort of business, and it's an agreement among peers, so the social pressure to be honest about both the value and quality of work contributed is going to be quite high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like this dynamic equity split idea.

To really supercharge it:

1\. Embody the terms in a straightforward template operating agreement.

2\. Automate and integrate all of the required bookkeeping in one central piece of software that gets feeds from github, constant contact, dribble, amazon, stripe etc. so that all of the costs and contributions are measured in one repeatable and auditable place; and all the revenue goes through one central checkpoint.

3\. Join it to a social milieu like Startup Weekend, so that it's very easy to form new development groups to explore profitable ideas; and so that many experiments can be tried.

4\. Harvest the best practices for successful ventures and spread that knowledge around.

<comment><USER17> That sounds like an entire startup in itself.

<comment><USER8> I agree with Alex. The dynamic equity concept doesn't sound simple to begin with, and I think your suggestions would just complicate the idea further.

A business can't spend all day meta-managing their equity, after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This sets up a more perverse incentive structure than pretty much anything else that comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER19> Someone apparently hasn't heard of or doesn't recognize the value of "knowing where to put the X".

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't have any problem with an arrangement like this if only because it causes everyone to TALK about it. The fact is...every startup can come up with whatever way they want to split up equity. If this works for everyone involved then go for it.</comment>


Ask YC: Normal Options/Equity for Employee Number 1 - <AUTHOR>

Not sure if this has been posted before, but I have a few questions.
1. What would be considered fair equity for employee number one, in a startup, considering there is another developer and slightly below market pay (let's say... 25% below market, 75k when market is 100k) with an incomplete product?
2. What is considered a normal/common vesting period for equity?
3. Lastly, what are the downsides of a revenue share only package? <comment><USER2> As with most things: it depends.

How much risk have you taken out of your business? What is the market size and upside potential? What is employee #1's contribution expected to be? Is employee #1 your chief technologist, your CMO, or something different?

Have you closed angel or A-round funding, or are you paying them out of your pocket?

I am an East Coast startup person. Employee #1 at a post angel pre-A startup out here wants at least 1-2% with some hedging against dilution when the VCs enter.

Equity at the startups I've worked for is 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff and monthly vesting at month 13. Most savvy negotiators will want a nut of options that vest immediately on acceptance.

If your product is not complete and you can't show that the market is itching to buy your product, a revenue-share-only package will be impossible to value.

But then again, same with the options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not much. Approx 5 million businesses. Employees expected contribution is to finish development of system. Yes (Chief Technologist).

Thanks for the advice.

<comment><USER2> Without knowing much about your particular business, I'd say you should expect to yield 2 percent of the equity and hold out for a proven rock star.

I'd avoid any instant-vesting grants if it comes up unless that employee is bringing you customer #1 or #2, or a significant partnership out of the gate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lets remove the word fair, and I'll submit the following:

1\. Options: 1% - 5% since this is a "non-founder" early employee and you already have another developer.

2\. 4 years vesting with 1 year cliff seems to be "market" (i.e. the most common). After the cliff, vesting is usually pro-rata on a monthly basis.

3\. The big downside of a revenue-only structure is that it does not attract the best candidates. The risk is skewed too much (the person you're trying to recruit is taking too much risk).

My two cents. Situations vary widely (on #1), so the standard deviation is pretty high.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. It depends (mostly on company financing stage and valuation).

2\. 4 years, 1 year cliff.

3\. It's an uncommon structure that won't align the company's interests with your employee's. Revenue up front and value building don't always go hand in hand.

</comment><comment><USER5> As an aside, <http://venturehacks.com> is a great site for questions like this.

</comment><comment><USER6> From #3, are you asking what equity someone would want to work for free? Because if you are you'll never find anyone who'll want to do that.

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Zero

2\. Infinity

3\. It fails to maximize your expected utility while minimizing everyone else's.</comment>


Offer HN: I will work for free tomorrow in Berlin - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently in Berlin, visiting here as part of my Europe trip. I remember how much this post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3216323) came across as an excellent way of meeting with people in the startup scene, so I'm offering the same with identical terms.
Tomorrow I'll do anything for any Berlin startup that would have me. I'm an all around developer with a front-end focus, have been mostly working with JavaScript/CoffeeScript/Python/MySQL. I built the online map builder Mashupforge (http://mashupforge.com) so I'm particularly interested in online mapping.
Even if you don't have anything for me to do, I'd love to meet up for half an hour and chat about startups/Berlin over coffee/beer.
Send me an email! mehmet at mashupforge dot com <comment><USER2> How does your experiment go/went? I really like this idea, it may give better overview of local startups without waiting until their HR machine is rolling & it's rolling super slowly here - It's my 3rd week here and i'll get final answers beginning of next week. I'm just thinking, should i post new HN topic : "i'll develop for curry-wurst&beer until i got final answers " or just build new web-app, called "CouchCoding".

</comment><comment><USER3> Best of luck! Maybe you should post into the Berlin Startups group on Facebook, too (<https://www.facebook.com/groups/159595270791268/>). It's pretty active.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Wow, looks like it has 2.5k+ members.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sent you an email and would gladly have you over for lunch tomorrow. Our focus is _weirdly_ related to "online mapping", (<http://eyequant.com>), happy to chat more tomorrow.</comment>


Why the German language has so many great words - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/why-the-german-language-has-so-many-great-words-55554 <comment><USER3> _sitzpinkler_! I had no idea this was actually a word.

15 years ago, when I was a young man in my early 20s, I lived in the top floor of a house, sharing that floor (and that floor's bathroom) with two other people: a German chap, and an English girl. Fast forward about six months and somehow one day a conversation took whatever turn would be required for it to be appropriate for me to say: "Well, I almost always leave the seat down, because I almost always sit down to take a piss." Cue a sudden burst of laughter from the German - who says they don't have a sense of humour? - because it turned out he did exactly the same thing. Good to know it wasn't just me at least, I suppose.

"Well" said our floormate. "I always wondered how such a pair of inconsiderately dirty bastards were still so consistently good at politely leaving the seat down."

There were 3 men in the house, and the 3rd man would occasionally use "our" bathroom. So the very next day the German guy put a sign up on the door in order to keep him out. SIT PISSERS ONLY.

<comment><USER4> There's also "Heimscheißer" \-- someone who strongly prefers taking a dump in the comfort of his own home, and may even be incapable of doing so elsewhere, except for emergency situations.

<comment><USER5> Since that word is somewhat noted for its use in the German dubbed movie American Pie, I just wondered what the original uses instead. Apparently: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shitbreak](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shitbreak)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TLDR: English and German both have compounds, but German additionally has simple rules to form and decline nouns from participles.

E.g.:

werdend = becoming

Werdender = someone (male), who is becoming

Fun fact: These participles always have a neutral plural, so they are gender neutral and are thus abused all over the place. In official documents the German language is losing all of its proper nouns, until everything is built out of participles.

E.g.:

Studenten = students (male)

Studentinnen = students (female)

Studierende = people, who study

<comment><USER7> Another fun fact: for political correctness, an artificial gender-neutral way of referring to both male and female students has long been the "internal capital I" [1]:

        Studenten (male) + Studentinnen (female) = StudentInnen

Recently though, the Green Party has gone a step further in Germany, and now uses in all of their documents the so-called "gender-star" [2]:

        Student*innen

This is because it was felt that the version with capital-I only focused on males and females, but still excluded trans-sexual, trans-gender, and inter- sexual people.

This practice has even led to a new verb in German: "to gender", i.e., to use politically correct gender-neutral language.

[1] [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binnen-I](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binnen-I)

[2] [http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/die-gruenen- machen...](http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/die-gruenen-machen- geschlechtsneutrale-sprache-zur-pflicht-a-1063228.html)

<comment><USER8> Spanish countries do it for years with "@" or "x" like "estimad@s" for "estimados" and "estimadas" at once. And Latin America is not very politically correct, it's just respectful for all genders.

<comment><USER9> In writing only, and very obnoxious as well for a culture that fights for their grave accents and correct language way more than their English counterpart.

Otherwise tell me how do you say niñ@s out loud.

<comment><USER10> Hah, I just tried to pronounce it with coarticulation of [a] and [o], and it came out as [ɞ] [1]. /niɲɞs/ sounds totally alien.

In reality, probably "niños y niñas".

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open- mid_central_rounded_vowel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open- mid_central_rounded_vowel)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fundamentally, English is a flexible enough language that if any of these concepts became common enough they would become ordinary words (probably lifted directly from German).

This has actually happened, for example _Blitzkrieg_ (commonly the "blitz"); now this does _not_ simply mean "lightning war", it very much references a particular part of a particular war. Also, _Zeitgeist_ is used in English, but doesn't simply translate to "spirit of the time".

Often such compound words mean more than the sum of their parts (as I guess the OP kind of meant), which is what makes them interesting to other languages. OTOH, it seems pretty rare these constructs actually describe something that English doesn't have a word/phrase for already. In fact, I would say that its not so much that German has such constructs in their language that makes them interesting, and more that as a different culture they have different words to describe different concepts.

Edit: I should probably point out that I am a native English speaker that can speak fluently Norwegian. "Ohrwurm" and "Wunderkind" are such nonsense examples in this case; they are literal translations (just without the space, and are understandable from any Scandinavian language), and they are pretty much anti examples. Using foreign words that mean _exactly the same_ as the English equivalents is nothing but pretentious, and doesn't support his central argument at all.

<comment><USER12> >Also, Zeitgeist is used in English, but doesn't simply translate to "spirit of the time".

Except is generally does. That is still the primary definition in any common dictionary, and the understood meaning of this word.

<comment><USER11> Really? To me that sort of is the closest translation, but it doesn't really hit the nail on the head. But maybe that's just my weird linguistic background.

<comment><USER13> Maybe it's a regional thing? My understanding of how people use it is still 'spirit of the time'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sanskrit is similar. There are elaborate rules for combining, called "Sandhi" [1] [2] which shows how nearby vowels or vowels near consonants change to form a combined sound "aa+e = aie" etc. This allows the formation of fairly long words, for example - "kimkarthavyathaavimoodatha", "not knowing what to do next".

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

[2] [https://ubcsanskrit.ca/lesson3/sandhirules.html](https://ubcsanskrit.ca/lesson3/sandhirules.html)

<comment><USER15> Sanskrit has analogous structures, but they are not called Sandhi. Sandhi refers specifically to phonetic combinations of adjacent sounds in subsequent words, not a semantic or morphological combination. These phonetic processes are almost completely independent of semantics.

The analogous structures in Sanskrit to the articles German examples are various types of compounds, like tatpurusha, dvandva, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I only have a little German, but I was so glad to read an article that mirrored my feelings learning the language, which no one around seemed to share. Not just that they smash words together, but that they do it with such humor and whimsy. The author gave far more interesting examples, but some of my favorites were Fledermaus (bat: a flying mouse) and Hackfleisch (ground beef).

<comment><USER17> You might enjoy this chart:

[https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/funny-animal-names-in- ger...](https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/funny-animal-names-in-german)

<comment><USER18> Thank you, that gave me quite a chuckle! =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> These contractions seem to add a lot of ambiguity though. Since "Backpfeifengesicht" is not commonly used, I thought it described a person who has been getting a lot of slaps across the neck so that his face took that form. Without context, these words are sometimes hard to understand unless they're commonly used.

Another example is Sitzpinkler. While this word is not ambiguous, it still sounds funny. I'd never use that and probably say "a person who pees while sitting". It might be used on some sign, although it makes the place where such a sign is found sound cheap because that word is really colloquial.

Nevertheless, it does create some great words such Schadenfreude, and Werdende. While i would never use Werdende, i believe it is used a lot in lyric (poems and that stuff). Schadensfreude is a really nice word through.

Disclaimer: my native language is German.

<comment><USER20> in French there is an expression for backpfeifengesicht, "tête à claques" (i.e., the kind of face that deserves to be slapped) that is commonly used

<comment><USER21> Expressions like that can sometimes be traced to a single literary source. They also spread through translated versions. In that case, even a "naturally occurring" expression in one language could spawn an expression coined by literature in another. Without further data, it might be entirely possible that Backpfeifengesicht was composed by a single translator trying to transfer the well-known-expression nature of "tête à claques" into german.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I made an account just to tell you the most wonderful word creation of all: "Neugier", the german for "curiosity, is made out of the words for "new" and "greed", you could translate it as "greed for new things".

</comment><comment><USER23> Lets not forget the funny Mark Twain essay "The awful German language". For those that haven't read it: [https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html](https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> My father, who was German, used to claim that almost any hyphenated phrase was actually a single word.

Most especially, he used to claim this when we played Scrabble.

<comment><USER25> That's why for German scrabble there are quite different rules.

Because, if you want, you can turn anything into a word.

Someone who turns anything into a word:

female: Allesinworteverwandelnde, male: Allesinworteverwandelnder, etc.

You can just string things together. It's exactly like you name things in Java. Bus. BusStop. BusStopPosition. BusBusStopInteraction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> English has plenty of these kinds of compound words: "shoebox", "lapdog", "underworld", "housewife", "footstool", "raincoat", etc. Other compounds like "thoughtexperiment", "cocktaildress" or "middleschool" are written with spaces, simply by convention. We could write them without spaces if we wanted to.

The author even says as much: "Both German and English can create compound words out of most parts of speech, not just nouns, and English sometimes hyphenates them or even writes them as one word".

So it seems like the answer to the initial question ("So what is it about the German language that allows for such constructions?") is "arbitrary spelling rules".

<comment><USER27> I think here's where you're missing the point: The article describes how authors like to, and are able to, coin new compound words in German and readers can understand them without the need for explanation. IMO this is something that's harder to do in English. The main reason for that is not that compound nouns exist, but the ability to turn everything into a noun and _then_ combine it with others.

Example:

green - grün - Begrünung ("planting with trees and grass") - Strassenbegrünung ("planting trees and grass along the street").

You may be able to use "greening" here, but at least AFAIK it is not common in English since it seems a bit strange to turn adjectives into nouns like that. In German I don't even think that anyone needed to explain that word - <USER2> immediately think of the older word "Bepflanzung" (planting) and notice that it's probably meant in this context. It's all about reusing known pre- and suffixes.

<comment><USER28> > The article describes how authors like to, and are able to, coin new > compound words in German and readers can understand them without the need > for explanation

I guess to some extent the comparison is going to be subjective (and my German is so bad I can't really do so with confidence), but I think a big component in the discussion has to do with dialects. Were someone to say "street- greenin'" in my hometown, the phrase would be understood right away, and is entire grammatical in many American english dialect, but no in the standard dialect. Now if you walk on to a university campus and say that you are interested in neotransphilic interpersonalization most people will have little trouble getting at what you mean (though they might agree as to the _specific_ meaning, and role there eyes at you if they study English). This is rather high brow, but these kind of fun and games with prefixes, suffixes, and a regimen of contractions are also common in 1337 and other dialects. But again, they are not part of the standard dialect.

I would be curious to see a comparison of difference in compound words across different German dialects.

<comment><USER27> I think there's a difference in what is perceived as 'standard' between the two languages. English basically gives you a very rich vocabulary that has pretty much preset terms - common, legal, official and academic - for all concepts. German basically gives you a set of rules, a set of word stems and the rest is "Usus", i.e. the way it is commonly used, which is weaker than being part of an official standard. So different regions may have different official terms for the same thing because there is no standard to tell them otherwise - consensus is only reached through interaction. I think that's similar to how it works with English in the UK though.

Now, when it comes to the initial rules, they are common to all dialects, albeit with some variations (vowel / consonant shift etc.). So the "Be" in Begrünung would be universally understood as indicating a human activity in this context, rather than a passive process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Colloquial English, at least in America, has the idea of a "punchable face." Perhaps not as catchy as the German word (which is just a couple words jammed together anyway), but they're similar.

I really hate this phrase. I just generally find it repulsive, but also 99% of the people who say it would never hit anyone.

</comment><comment><USER30> One of my philosphy professors at university said Heidegger and most of German philosphy is only an expression of German language, like "Das Sein, Das Seiende, ..."

</comment><comment><USER31> My personal favorite: "Hängematte" (hammock) – a hanging mat (something to be hanged + mat)

While actually borrowed from Haitian "hamáka" (it entered German first in the early 15 hundreds as "Hamaco" or "Hamach"), it was soon adopted in the form of a similar sounding native compound. (Also compare the Dutch "hangmat".) Just few native speakers realize, it's not what it reads.

<comment><USER32> This word actually was originally formed in Dutch (hangmat, also from hamaka) and was borrowed by German slightly later.

<comment><USER31> Yes, this also what I once learned at university, but newer accounts tend to skip this step of transition.

<comment><USER32> What I wrote was actually somewhat speculative. More recent Dutch etymology research ( [http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/hangmat](http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/hangmat) ) says that there is an early German find Hengmatten [1627; Pfeifer], more than 40 years before the first Dutch find (1669). Still, Philippa et al. claim, the German must be a loan translation from Dutch, both because it is a sailor's term in the Dutch Golden Age, and because a direct German derivation seems less plausible as it would have more sound changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Lots of the words mentioned in the article are not of common use in German. They are great words, though! For the attentive reader: [https://email@example.com,9.9655336,3a,15y,64.5...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,9.9655336,3a,15y,64.52h,87.29t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1se6uYPPS5hUxnuu2LG88hsw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1)

</comment><comment><USER18> As a native German speaker, I do appreciate the ability to join words like that.

English, on the other is awesome for forming phrases that are nearly impossible to translate. "To go to town on somebody" is one I really like, for example. Also, English is much better for cursing, for some reason. People cursing in German always sound really, really lame (except for Bavarians).

<comment><USER34> Funny that you mention English as better for cursing; as a French, I've always found the English catalogue of dirty words and insults quite limited. There doesn't even seem to have more than 2 or 3 common names for genitals of both sex, or even several dirty names for sodomy. Imaginative genitals naming coupled with religion, dirty things and weird sexual practices allow for some nice compositions :)

<comment><USER18> Well, I have to admit my knowledge of French is limited to a handful of words. The only languages I know well enough to make a comparison are German and English. :-/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> German is the Java of human languages.

<comment><USER25> Which is an awesome concept, if the alternatives are PHP (english).

<comment><USER18> English would be Perl, obviously. ;-)

<comment><USER36> This would imply that lots of English text can only be written, but hardly understood by someone else. No, really: I think PHP is the better comparison.

<comment><USER18> Well, but English is a very pragmatic language, "importing" ideas (vocabulary, mainly) freely from other languages, with a rather loose (dare I say "messy"? Compared to Latin, at least...) syntax that offers a lot of flexibility, making, as they say, easy things easy and hard things possible, choosing expressiveness over conceptual clarity/elegance. Sounds a little like Perl to me. ;-)

OTOH, PHP has taken inspiration from Perl, so I do not disagree very strongly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Reading Kafka in german is so much more modern and musical than in english or any other language. Kafka in english sounds almost sentimental, less modern. At least thats my feeling. In english translators often break his long paragraphs and sentences. Samuel Beckett said that he used to read most of Kafka in german, especially the Castle - Das Schloß.

<comment><USER18> I once had the unusual task of helping to translate a lengthy set of requirement specification documents for a migration between to ERP systems from German to English.

My overall impression is that German lends itself far easier to lengthy, nested, convoluted sentences. You can build long sentences in English, too, but their structure tends to be ... flatter?

So in translating, I would often break up monstrous monolithic sentences ("Bandwurmsatz", as we say in German) into several shorter ones.

It is different, I guess, when translating literature, but translating literature is probably really, _really_ hard anyway. So try to have pity on those poor people who had to translate Kafka.

I generally prefer to read literature in its original language, but English is the only foreign language I know well enough to do that... :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think the greatest thing about the German language is its practicality. "Ausgang" or "exit", literally from the words 'go out' or 'gone out' but that describes the action and noun. It is the description of the word that becomes the word. "Escalator" is "Fahrtreppe" or "Rolltreppe", literally moving/going stairs or roll stairs.

<comment><USER39> w.r.t exit, that's just because english borrowed the word from another language:

From exeō ("exit, go out"), from ē ("out") + eō ("go").

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> My favourite versions of Sitzpinkler, the many ways to describe a "big girl's blouse" in German:

Sporttaschenvergesser - Sportbagforgetter. A guy who always "forgets" his sports bag at PE class.

Vorwärtseinparker - Forwardparker. A guy who parallel parks forward, rather than by reversing in.

Warmduscher - Warmshowerer. Rather than manly cold ones.

<comment><USER41> the second one is also called "Turnbeutelvergesser" (has the same meaning) but used more often/commonly. ...as far as i notice.

<comment><USER7> And has arguably a better ring to it, since "Turnbeutel" is more readily associated with children than "Sporttasche", making the term slightly more ridiculing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Finnish is nice for this as well. The grammar is mostly about inflected forms so you can keep things together in a single word, you can most often find a way to write words together, and even creating completely new yet understandable words by joining existing words together or applying onomatopoetics is doable.

</comment><comment><USER43> One of my favourites is "Reißverschlussverfahren", which describes the way in which two lanes of traffic should merge like a zip closing.

[https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reißverschlussverfahren](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reißverschlussverfahren)

<comment><USER44> English has the exact same term with the same meaning: "zipper method"

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Incidentally, it is probably also the best language to swear in :)

<comment><USER46> Cantonese is the best language to swear in!

<comment><USER43> Is there any language that can compare to the amazing variety of expressiveness offered by the word "fuck" though?

[http://www.angelfire.com/or/mckennap/fuck.html](http://www.angelfire.com/or/mckennap/fuck.html)

P.s. Angelfire... Now that brings back memories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> One disadvantage of this is that it actually makes a decent spelling correction (e.g. MS Word) more difficult.

<comment><USER48> OpenOffice was great in having strange combinations in its dictionaries, and no sense for if they might fit or not. I remember it once being insistent on correcting something over a large edit distance to Steinzeitauto ("stone age car"), which is a correctly formed word, but really only useful if referring to the "The Flintstones".

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> my favorite one: rosinenpicker, a person who eats the raisins in the cake

<comment><USER49> Related: Korinthenkacker (raisin crapper), a nitpicker

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I heard German has more abstract words , is that true?

<comment><USER51> Not necessarily more "abstract", but for various reasons here are more words imbued with double- or multiple meanings.

That and there's intrinsically more positional freedom for certain categories of words; e.g. _Werdende_ in the above article is essentially the same word as the verb participle _werdend_ , but placed in a position (that of a nounified adjective) which basically doesn't work in English.

The analogous construction in English would be "the becoming" or "the expecting", implicitly referring to a thing or person. Other than lyrical cases ("The Shining"), you pretty much wouldn't use that formulation in English.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Really, more than Sanskrit?)

</comment><comment><USER53> The german language has long words simply because its written form (orthography) doesn't require spaces between the elements of a noun phrase.

So whereas in English we write "law school entrance examination test requirements", the German written transliteration of that will string the words together without spaces.

Calling that a "word" makes a strawman out of the concept of a word.

<comment><USER54> The german frequently employs the letter 's' to glue the words together, for instance: Nutzungsgebühr, which is made up of words Nutzung (usage) and Gebühr (fee). Or as in BedienungSanleitung. Actually, they are so much accustomed to the use of 's' if you speak them in English, when they make a mistake, they tend to mistake on the 's', for instance I did hear a German say "it doesn't workS" .)

<comment><USER19> I've helped some 4th grader learn English and they always explained to me that they used "it doesn't works" because of the rule that after using he, she and it, there needs to be an S (there is even a German saying for English learners: "he, she, it und das als muss mit" – in English, "he she it and the S must come along"). Since they have heard that saying so much, they often miss that they already used the S in "doesn't" and use it again. A lot of practice often helps though.

<comment><USER53> They need the general rule that English verbs can be verb phrases, which have an auxiliary or modal like "have" or "do". And that such verb phrases inflect the auxiliary verb, while the main verb stays in the infinitive form (or in the participle form, as the case may be). The auxiliary carries the tense, negation, person and number.

Also it helps to imagine that there is always an auxiliary. If you don't see it, it is invisible, but still there. When the auxiliary is invisible, it cannot take the tense, number and so on; these markers go to the main verb.

Now when you make a question, the auxiliary and sentence subject exchange places (subject-aux inversion). This still happens when the aux: is invisible.

Visible aux (will):

Statement: You will have the soup.

Question: Will you have the soup?

Invisible aux:

Statement: You [invisible] have the time.

Question: [invisible] you have the time?

But now, this invisible aux is dangling up in front of the clause and that is forbidden. In this situation, the invisible aux is instantiated in a visible form, and it appears as the verb "do":

Question: Do you have the time?

And, as usual, this invisible-come-visible aux now takes the tense, number, person, "not" negation away from the main verb. With that we can more or less semi-accurately understand how "do" works in forming questions.

<comment><USER19> Remember that the mistake I mention above is often made by beginners. While it is true what you said, it is easier to just tell them: always use two verbs in a question or negative sentence. If you don't have two, just borrow "do" and apply the appropriate time/person to that verb and use the infinitive form of the second verb. When learning a language it is important to have easy-to- understand and simple rules. When you try to write or speak in a foreign language, there are a lot of things to consider and you are going to forget a few. The best thing you can do is practice a lot until it starts to sound natural. If you always try to apply all rules you've learned, you are going to miss some, no matter how smart you are. It's also important to have someone who can correct you and tell you the appropriate rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> >The only important structural difference between the German and the English in these compounds is whether there is a written space between the two nouns...

I still don't understand how creating these huge, unwieldy words is an advantage. If a useful word contains more than about four syllables people tend to shorten it, just like they would an English phrase.

<comment><USER56> The article explicitly tries to explain its idea of an "advantage", stuffing more information into less characters ('English needs a whole sentence to explain the concept of a single albeit long word in German').

Disclaimer: I'm German. I like my native language. But I don't think that it is more concise than English in any use case I can think of and while I feel that the article is interesting and amusing, it's not comparing the real world German to English. The examples are valid, the article didn't seem wrong, but .. I doubt that this has any significance.

Unwieldy is a crappy attribute of course. They aren't unwieldy. Foreign, strange to you? Sure, can't argue with that. Unwieldy though? Don't judge what you don't know.

<comment><USER57> Are there any English words that capture an abstract concept with great precision, and do not exist in the German language?

<comment><USER58> I wonder what the German equivalent of "boffin" is?

<comment><USER48> That's a good example.

The closest I can think of is "Tüftler", but that really doesn't capture the science-y aspect and is more hands-on. More the guy building a fusion reactor in his garage, less the group designing a radar device in some government lab.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


W. Brian Arthur popularized an economic theory that changed Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3064681/most-creative-people/most-important-economic-theory-in-technology-brian-arthur <comment><USER2> > If a product or a company or a technology—one of many competing in a > market—gets ahead by chance or clever strategy, increasing returns can > magnify this advantage, and the product or company or technology can go on > to lock in the market.

Isn't this just describing the nature of monopoly power? The worship of this ideal seems to go hand in hand with the weakening of antitrust enforcement over recent decades.

<comment><USER3> It is rather describing the process of becoming a monopoly in the post- industrial economy. Mergers were the main mechanism previously, while now nobody needs M&A anymore: just bet on 20 great looking startups and one of them will become a monopoly.

<comment><USER4> >>[...] while now nobody needs M&A anymore: just bet on 20 great looking startups and one of them will become a monopoly.

For early stage startups I agree, but the prevalence of acquire-hires and straight-up acquisitions in recent years is indicative of thriving corporate M&A departments.

Given the recent wave of early-stage AI investments, another wave of not only consolidation but acquisitions is probably on the horizon.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but what I meant was M&A is no longer a mechanism of becoming a monopoly at least in the tech world. Interestingly, I can't even think of one big acquisition in tech (excluding cable/utilities) that led to a monopoly as a result.

<comment><USER5> Google buying DoubleClick?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of the hype was due to people accepting Metcalfe's Law of networks being worth their size squared. Network effects are much smaller, as [http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf](http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf) argues, they are generally closer to O(n log(n)) than O(n^2).

That said the power of owning the standard is hard to overestimate. I highly recommend a close read of [http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post](http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post) to see how important it is, and how much of a disadvantage it is to have to play catch-up.

<comment><USER7> Ah an Odlyzko paper of the form "X common statement-thing is actually wrong". Another good one is "Content is not King", which also has interesting effects in the tech industry (whether correct or incorrect).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're interested in the economics of tech, this is one of my favorite books:

Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy - [http://amzn.to/2hKFpwW](http://amzn.to/2hKFpwW)

One of the authors, Varian, is now Google's Chief Economist, so they must think highly of him too.

The book is a bit older, but like the book says, "Technology changes, economic laws do not."

<comment><USER9> This was a great read! There are some really cool ideas such as how information products are high fixed-cost low marginal-cost items and what that means for the market. It also has salient coverage of topics like lock-in, price discrimination, and the different ways that standards affect organizations. Thanks for mentioning this, I would also definitely recommend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This book chronicles Arthur's struggle pushing his theories through mainstream academia and how that ultimately led to the creation of the Sante Fe Institute. It's a narrative mixed with an overview of the creation of complexity theory and many of the concepts he (and others) came up with that changed economic thinking.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/337123.COMPLEXITY](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/337123.COMPLEXITY)

<comment><USER11> Hear hear. It's one of the best computer science textbooks I've ever read. What's odd is that my college offered it to their Architecture students (due to its economic / philosophical ramifications), and none of the Computer Science classes had it on their list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Misleading headline. From the article:

>"People in Silicon Valley," says Arthur, "knew a lot about this phenomenon intuitively. But nobody had really written about it clearly."

<comment><USER13> If someone is only described as having popularized an idea, that usually means they didn't invent it.

<comment><USER12> Title: W. Brian Arthur popularized an economic theory that changed Silicon Valley

My interpretation: Mr. Arthur popularized an idea and in doing so shared it with the technologists in Silicon Valley, who applied it to their work.

Truth: Mr. Arthur put to words a phenomenon that was incidentally also observed in Silicon Valley.

The misleading part being the assumed causation, i.e. if it weren't for Mr. Arthur popularizing the idea, the Valley wouldn't look like it does today.

<comment><USER14> Sometimes a clear explanation is the most important part. It gives people a common frame of reference and lets them have the _next_ conversation.

For example, this is why Design Patterns are so powerful. When I say MVC or Active Record, most developers have a good handle on what I mean so now we can skip the "what" and get to the "how" in a fraction of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> link to the article mentioned: [https://hbr.org/1996/07/increasing-returns- and-the-new-world...](https://hbr.org/1996/07/increasing-returns-and-the-new- world-of-business)

<comment><USER16> Thank you. I found it odd the article would hype this piece like this, quote an entire paragraph and mention the Cormac McCrarthy connection and not give a link. News on the internets business as usual I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Eugene Kmetovicz's book, New Product Development: Design and Analysis (1992) includes a graph and formula demonstrating the importance of time to market. The first mover acquires a much larger part of the market by being first and becoming the standard. His book, while a bit dated, is a good read.

[https://www.amazon.com/New-Product-Development-Design- Analys...](https://www.amazon.com/New-Product-Development-Design- Analysis/dp/0471555363)

</comment><comment><USER18> As a big fan of his work, I would like to recommend his book: Complexity and the Economy.</comment>


Tree with Moon // 278 chars - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/lexaloffle/status/1052502760329961473 <comment><USER2> Pico8 link for the lazy: [https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php](https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php)

It is super fun to work with

<comment><USER3> Also Dwitter[0], "javascript demos in 140 characters", if one's into this kind of stuff

[0]: [https://www.dwitter.net/](https://www.dwitter.net/)</comment></comment>


Show HN: New video to explain new service - <AUTHOR>

I created a new video. What does everyone think? http://oim.ae/oivideo <comment><USER2> clickable: <http://oim.ae/oivideo></comment>


Gut instincts: The secrets of your second brain (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://neurosciencestuff.tumblr.com/post/38271759345/gut-instincts-the-secrets-of-your-second-brain

<comment><USER2> Cheap gene sequencing has spurred an explosion of research on the bacterial flora in your gut and its links with various diseases and disorders. (Obesity, mood disorders, irritable bowel/Crohn's, I forget what else.)

There's a Coursera class in progress on this right now ([https://class.coursera.org/microbiome-001/](https://class.coursera.org/microbiome-001/)) run by Rob Knight at UC Boulder. Another interesting thing to look at is the American Gut ([http://americangut.org/](http://americangut.org/)) project, which will analyse a sample of your gut bacteria for $100.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've long since discovered what a large impact specific diets have on my mood, depression and well-being. I ordered a gut sampling from uBiome last week and am looking forward to having measurements to manage.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if this has anything to do with the effectiveness of the ketogenic diet to treat epilepsy.</comment>


Does Bitcoin/Blockchain make sense for international money transfers? - <AUTHOR> https://www.saveonsend.com/blog/bitcoin-blockchain-money-transfer/ <comment><USER2> Goods/services purchased from a business? Given the fees for completing a Bitcoin transaction, I'd say no unless you start getting into at least mid three-figures USD. (That's not counting any fees to convert fiat into BTC.)

Person-to-person transfer (e.g. remittances)? It'd probably make more sense to use Xoom or Transferwise where available.

The big (legitimate) use for Bitcoin international money transfers is dodging capital controls imposed by illegitimate governments, e.g., you're in Venezuela and you want to send money to your family in Colombia/Brazil/US.

<comment><USER3> > Goods/services purchased from a business? Given the fees for completing a > Bitcoin transaction, I'd say no unless you start getting into at least mid > three-figures USD. (That's not counting any fees to convert fiat into BTC.)

what? 15-20 cents is not a major transaction fee, especially when compared to WU and other alternatives

You may have had a point with fiat conversion fees which can be hefty, but you specifically didn't count them.

I've only paid a > $.50 transaction fee on the bitcoin network for about 45 days during the huge runup in Nov/Dec 2017. Any other time and the fees are in the double-digit cents for nearly guaranteed confirmation on the next block.

Edit: Whoops, just saw your reply. Leaving this up for posterity :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sure it does. Under normal circumstances, Bitcoin or Ethereum transactions cost only a few euro cents regardless of the amount transferred, while international remittance businesses always charge much more.

I read somewhere that the top 3 money remittance businesses (WU, etc) make as much profit as we (EU + US) spend in international aid. If those in the diaspora can send money back home without these middlemen, we could all stand to gain.</comment>


Facebook reveals friends list even when it's set to private - <AUTHOR> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/11/25/facebook-reveals-friends-list-even-when-its-set-to-private/ <comment><USER2> Also, sophos.com revealed to facebook.com, through an iframe, that I went and read an article on sophos.com about a facebook.com's vulnerability.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's long past time for Facebook to simply stop using the words "private" and "delete" on any of their pages, because they obviously don't mean it whenever they use them.

</comment><comment><USER4> I once made a fake FB account for testing purposes. I used private browsing in order to avoid having to log out of my real FB account. The two accounts never became friends or shared anything. The fake account does not have friends at all. The email address can not be tracked to me as well.

Yet every week, this email account receives an email with friend suggestions. I know about 75% of those people. With some of them , I'm not even friends on FB with my real account.

<comment><USER5> Nothing strange about this. They see that both accounts are accessed from the same ip, so they assume you must know each other.

<comment><USER6> Maybe it's not strange, but it sucks from a privacy PoV: if you can register an account with somebody else ip address you will know who are their circle of friends, even if the person opted for having the friend list hidden from everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think Facebook should just stop playing games and state that nothing will be private with the exception of personal messages. At least then everyone will know what to expect.

<comment><USER8> As if personal messages are private!

<comment><USER9> In what way are they not private?

<comment><USER10> Have you heard of the NSA? I think it's pretty safe to say at this point that NOTHING online is private.

<comment><USER11> Accidentally upvoted. NSA getting everything is not the same as everyone getting everything. NSA doesn't share with my mom.

<comment><USER12> Privacy doesn't mean "not everyone is getting everything". If FB shares my secrets with anyone without my consent, they're violoating my privacy. They don't need to make them available to _everyone_ for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've discovered this exact vulnerability (it is really a vulnerability, since you even see friendships when both people have set their friends list to "only me") about a year ago and sent Facebook the description to their white hat program. Their response was more or less "won't fix, no security issue". But it's kind of funny to see a public blog post about this issue now, maybe this creates some pressure.

</comment><comment><USER14> The friend list issue seems to be an always "won't fix". I'm pretty sure every few or so security researchers, testers reach this "vulnerability" in one method or another. I've gotten a similar response from the Security Team for trying to dig up friend lists. Maybe it helps maybe it doesn't. I've learned to accept the stance and move on with other security holes.

"A friend connection is two-way - you friend someone, then they approve the friend request. In essence, a friend connection means both "Philippe considers John a friend" and "John considers Philippe a friend". In other words, both people involved have some ownership over this claim - which means the privacy isn't always as simple as with other content."

"Let me use the third example in your screenshots to illustrate. Mark Zuckerberg's friend list is not public. But Greg Golkin's friend list is public - meaning if you pull up Greg's friends, you can see Mark in the list. You can also see Kevin Scott is in the list. Kevin's friend list isn't public... but Stuart Gillette's is, so you can see Kevin show up there. Consequently, using fb:degrees hasn't shown you any information you couldn't theoretically figure out by looking at public friend lists - it's just made it easier to find that info."

"Now I that at first glance this might appear to be inconsistent or a privacy violation. But remember what I said earlier about the two parties involved in a friendship connection. Essentially, you're free to hide the fact that you consider John a friend, but it's also John's choice to publicize that he counts you as a friend - and hiding connections he's publicized would essentially override his privacy wishes. In some cases, such as with fb:degrees, we show connections if they're visible to you on at least one side of the friendship."

"Now, if Mark's list is private and all of his friends set their lists to private too, you should never get a result using fb:degrees. In that case, any final link in the chain connecting you to Mark would involve a friendship that was hidden to you from both sides of the connection, so we wouldn't display it to you."

"A common case where we get similar reports is the "friendship page" between two people - we show mutual friends of the two people if each of the two friend connections is visible to you on at least one side, but we hide any mutual friends where one of the connections is hidden on both sides. To help clarify some of these situations, we added this description to the friend list privacy setting: "Remember: Your friends control who can see their friendships on their own timelines. If people can see your friendship on another timeline, they'll be able to see it in news feed, search and other places on Facebook. They'll also be able to see mutual friends on your timeline."

This is a case where privacy can get complicated, but we think the way we've chosen to operate is a good balance of the competing priorities involved. We've also chosen to focus more on privacy controls around your content and personal information, since trying to maintain privacy by limiting discoverability is often an illusion. Since Facebook is a network designed for social participation, it's nearly impossible for it to work properly and let people stay completely hidden - there are many ways to discover a profile or friendship beyond friend lists or searches. But even if someone discovers your profile, you have a great degree of control about what they can then access.

I hope that helps clarify what you were observing here. Emrakul was also correct that we have rate limiting to prevent brute-forcing at scale, and given the above controls, even building up a list through iterations would never allow you to know for sure if you'd acquired the entire hidden friend list. I think our current setup is working as intended here, but definitely let us know if you think the controls I described can be overridden somehow."

<comment><USER15> Obviously there will be a contention when you have an asset that is shared and they flag it in a different way... and on a certain level it makes sense that "public" wins when you have 1 public and 1 private because if _one_ person chooses to share anything else then it's public, so why should connections be different?

But on another level, no.

If a person has decided their connections are private information, then the implication is pretty strong that they could expect that to be private _completely_. Otherwise I would expect a warning of some-kind on my "private" connections that are actually public because the other end is public. They are completely violating the user's expectation and the described functionality of that option.

<comment><USER16> Right, when preferences are in conflict do you protect the person who cares or the person who doesn't?

Also privacy is like a thermodynamic arrow. You can't unspread a secret or make public information private. So you shouldn't treat the decision to go public lightly.

<comment><USER17> > Also privacy is like a thermodynamic arrow.

Running off on a tangent, that's a really interesting analogy. I wonder how much could be done with the notion that privacy is the opposite of entropy: that is, privacy is about minimizing the arrangements of how your information is formed, and there's a universal, inevitable trend towards maximizing those arrangements. Differently, privacy as the _predictability_ of how a piece of information moves: as entropy, or publicity, increases the predictability of the information becomes less as its possibility space increases.

<comment><USER16> This notion makes sense to me. The more public or quotidian your thoughts and behavior, the greater chance that people will be able to nail you down. And there are interesting feedback loops when you go public, then people expect you to continue to be public in similar situations.

There is an interesting tension between the benefits of collaboration and the benefits of individuality. John Lennon and Paul McCartney playing off each other, or Andrew Wiles working alone in obscurity.

Surprise and disruption are closely linked to privacy in my mind. Not necessarily by launch time. But the groundwork for originality to me is laid in the soil of a rich inner life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can also view a list of someone's friends by trying to recover their password. I reported it to their security team months ago and didn't get a response.

</comment><comment><USER18> I reported this bug two weeks ago and they have not responded. This is the second time I've submitted a security bug and got nothing back...

<comment><USER19> Someone of our team reported it some time ago too. We got a won't fix reply

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think you just have to accept that facebook, in general, has a 'share to a wide audience' as a default design stance. That stances enhances general viriality and usage of their program and thus increases their user base.

Same with never deleting anything, recording everything you do with like buttons around the internet and making it difficult to do such things as 'delete everything older than 3 months' with one click. Storage is cheap and the more information they have, the more valuable their product is to their customers, marketing firms.

Have a locked down by default stance just decreases the virality of their social product. The amount they piss off is smaller than the amount they gain unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER21> The article mentions the NSA, but if you don't think this can be used by anyone (not just people with huge botnets or databases like the NSA) then you'd be wrong as well. Consider trying to find the address of a person that you only know the facebook account of, but their name isn't listed in the phonebook. If you can see their friends list then it's fairly likely that it might have familiy members or housemates on it who _are_ listed. This is just one way of using the friends list. So it's a huge privacy issue that someone's friends list is exposed because anyone can use that information to figure out things about the person.

</comment><comment><USER22> FB should've really kept the initial idea of a public worldwide friend-graph and build a special website for people who want to hang out in private (or let someone else build it).

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I think that's one of the chief reasons I and others disagree about privacy and Facebook, a mis-match between views of what Facebook is or should be.

I see Facebook as a super-public platform for sharing your life, and that's how I've always thought of it. It's why I've had a hard time understanding how people can debate "privacy on Facebook" in the first place: I've felt there was nothing to debate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have a pseudonymous Facebook account that I use to access two private groups. My friends list is empty, which is nice. (It would be nicer if I didn't have an account and the people in the two private groups would check their email as often as they check Facebook so that we could use mailing lists instead of Facebook groups.)

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe Sophos should spend more time fixing their lousy software instead? As for security, you won't find it on FB.

</comment><comment><USER26> The same is true for the profile picture which is always public even if you set the privacy settings to 'only me'. Opening the thumbnail in the browser and changing the image size in the URL lets you view a full size image. Wonder why they even give you the privacy option there.

</comment><comment><USER27> So is this why I get random spam for which the name on the from address matches various Facebook friends?

</comment><comment><USER28> In other news, clear incentive structures predict the future actions of companies.

FB makes money when they receive data created when people interact. Anything that limits this interaction, will eventually disappear. Take this reasoning to the limit, and everything will be made public.

</comment><comment><USER29> 1) Create a completely new zero account with no connections.

2) Send a friend request to a user whose "private" friends you want to see.

3) Immediately withdraw your friend request.

4) See the "people you might know" list, voilà.

(at least it used to work for me about a year ago when i was looking for one girl)

</comment><comment><USER30> The article concludes with:

> I agree with Abezgauz on this issue: Facebook has no right to siphon our > friends off of a list putatively set to be private.

Now it strikes me that Facebook does have that right. You gave them that right when you chose to create an account with them and chose to make friend connections with that account. If you don't like the way they operate, don't use their service. You'd have to live in a vacuum not to know that Facebook has been consistently pushing the envelope of acceptable privacy for years. The reality is that if you truly _need_ complete privacy, a Facebook account is not for you.

<comment><USER31> > You'd have to live in a vacuum not to know that Facebook has been > consistently pushing the envelope of acceptable privacy for years

Facebook opened with and developed a following on the strength of unusually strong privacy settings.

Expectation-of-no-privacy, if that is an argument, can't apply to people who opened Facebook accounts under those circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Silly article. Why should Facebook fix anything here? Facebook is making billions of dollars the way it is. Facebook is a social networking site, not a private networking site. No one will get a reply to this because it's pointless. What you're asking for goes against the whole point of Facebook. Move on.

<comment><USER33> Okay, if that were the case, why would Facebook even have an option to make your friends list private?

There's nothing pointless about taking issue with "features" and options that don't do what they're purporting to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think you can do it even without creating a fake account. The "People you may know" page seems to comprehensively list all of your friends' friends. All you'd need is some scraper software to build it into a better organised list.

</comment><comment><USER35> man this privacy thing is a one nasty can of worms. they should've either kept it completely private or just public.

frankly if you are an extremely private person you shouldn't be using 'the facebook' but use email instead. few of my friends do just that.

regardless i think this is non-news-worthy article, facebook had this thing for a while and everyone here knows about that IMO.

my 2c

</comment><comment><USER36> They trust me.</comment>


Ask HN: Where is statuspage.io's MMR now? - <AUTHOR>

Last July, statuspage.io wrote a blog post entitled '5 Steps to $5,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue' [1] and then followed it up a couple of months later with 'Growing From $5,000 to $25,000 in MRR' [2].<p>Haven't seen another MRR post since. Wondering if they made it to 100K MRR?<p>[1] http://blog.statuspage.io/5-steps-to-5000-in-monthly-recurring-revenue [2] http://blog.statuspage.io/growing-from-5000-to-25000-in-mrr <comment><USER2> You might also consider asking on quora.</comment>


Textures.js – SVG patterns for Data Visualization - <AUTHOR> http://riccardoscalco.github.io/textures/ <comment><USER2> Love this style of documentation - very concise, concrete usage examples with a minimal amount of code needed to reproduce.

I actually modeled the new documentation of Trianglify ([http://qrohlf.com/trianglify/](http://qrohlf.com/trianglify/)) on the Textures.js docs.

I don't have the numbers on hand, but subjectively the number of 'how do I do X' github issues that I deal with has gone down a lot since adopting this style of docs.

<comment><USER3> Both this and Textures look really slick, I love them both!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Visually this looks very nice. I personally love your choice of colours for the website which compliments the retro look of pattern fills in general. What I'd like more information on, if possible, is whether or not such patterns are more effective, for communication, than regular colours. You're targeting D3 (as opposed to, say the printed page? Please confirm?), so I guess the question is, is this a visual candy (and an effective one for sure), or does it, in addition, have some proof of better effectiveness at visual category demarcation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not related to the project. I shared a cool link I found online. But I can think of at least two improvements over using regular colors. The first one being better support for people with color blindness when using a large amount of categories. And the second one is the possibility of showing more than one value at each sector. Something like [http://i.imgur.com/SdLeAPa.png](http://i.imgur.com/SdLeAPa.png) shows combination of two kind of data. One being the light/dark background, and the other being the circle/dash pattern

<comment><USER5> Yes! The color blindness point is a good one. It's amazing how 2 different colors can end up being basically the same when someone is color blind. This image ([http://i.imgur.com/4IbhU9w.png](http://i.imgur.com/4IbhU9w.png)) has an example. Imagine a chart/map/whatever using the 2 colors on the left, but looking to you like the ones on the right. Not that useful.

Actually I was giving a quick talk about this stuff at work using this very example and someone in the room was colorblind and he couldn't tell there was variation in the colors in the sentence. So, basically I got immediate vindication for haranguing the designers.

(pie chart example [http://i.imgur.com/ejAnDf5.png](http://i.imgur.com/ejAnDf5.png))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish I had a use-case to try this out, but I thought this was very cool. Thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER7> The patterns remind me of MacPaint.

[http://www.macprices.net/hildreth_moore/macpaintemulator.png](http://www.macprices.net/hildreth_moore/macpaintemulator.png)

</comment><comment><USER8> Yow! Zippy meets javascript! Are we having fun yet? Are we? are we?

Seriously, this is terrific.

</comment><comment><USER9> I see a lot of relatively low level libraries for data visualization. Are there any very high level libraries, that allow regular coders like me to visualize some data quickly? I find myself needing this all the time, but I would prefer the simplest interface possible, rather than high configurability.

<comment><USER10> My advice is to bite the bullet and learn d3 (instead of a wrapper like dc.js or nvd3) if this is for any production level data. Or build in the time you will need to rewrite it for API nastiness and probably performance reasons down the line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nice, this will come in handy. Beautiful site design too.

</comment><comment><USER12> this doesn't seem to work properly on firefox, I'm using FF48.0

<comment><USER13> Works fine on both FF48.0 and FF51.0a1 on Linux for me; do you have any SVG- related plugins?

<comment><USER12> it started working now (strange, using osx btw, not that it matters anymore)

<comment><USER13> Probably something like a CDN that timed out the first time then, for whatever reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a very neat library, I hope that I find myself using this on a project soon! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER15> great for offices with black and white printers

</comment><comment><USER16> these textures look absolutely glorious- well done! cant think of anything useful to say, but wanted to give you some positive feedback

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there any way to animate these textures?

<comment><USER18> Not sure if Textures.js supports it, but transitioning attributes on a pattern fill will create an animation.

I've played around with it -- looks fun but never managed to make it useful enough to actually use.</comment></comment>


[Ask HN] Feedback on an app I have been developing - <AUTHOR> http://www.getjourneyapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Specifically I am looking at feedback on these questions 1\. What aspect of the site confused you? 2\. What would improve this site? 3\. Will you buy this app? For how much? 4\. If no for 3, why not? What can improve your chances of buying?

<comment><USER2> I really like the design which is clean and the colors relate to memory for me. But the site still feels a bit empty. You have more explanation than most of the iphone apps websites i've seen, meaning not just a name, a one sentence pitch, a screenshot of the app and a link to the appstore. At first, I did not even see you add stuff below as it really looks like a "landing page". You might want to add something to show you have more info below? You might also want to add more details to what your app does, how the design looks for each case (taking a picture, checking a trip, etc.)

The 67% also confused me at first. I don't know if I'm the only one but I first thought of a "loading animation" more than the point where you currently are in your development. Now that I know you reference your work in progress, it would be nice to know if you have an idea of a deadline for the 100%. If you're at 67% but started last week or two years ago it's not the same.

I don't know if it's wanted but when selecting text/image the cursor change to look as if I can "edit" your content. And the second screenshot (of the map) in your presentation looks "deformed" (don't know the proper english word, but like it's not to scale).

I'm not sure I would buy this app as is but maybe if you offered more options like export the trips/memories online, share it with friends easily? But it seems that this kind of app already exists in Free (such as travelog, trip journal, etc.) how are you different from them or what more do you offer?

Anyway keep up the good work and add new functionalities!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi abhimir

I find the design looks pretty :-) But what is confusing to me is, that you don't link your Social Media accounts - this should be possible prelaunch.

KR, Fabian

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback, yes we will add social media accounts prelaunch. would you buy this app?</comment></comment>


ADmented Reality - Google Glasses Remixed with Google Ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_mRF0rBXIeg <comment><USER2> The fact that people are making videos about the Google glasses mere hours and days after the unveiling video, whether negative or positive, is a very good sign for the project. It shows people are very interested in it one way or the other (remember all the "big iPod" and MaxiPad jokes about the iPad before its launch?)

In regards to advertising, it's very unlikely Google would make the ads like that, and they might not even make special ads for the glasses at all, other than the ads you'll see in people's content (like on a webpage, app, etc), which is inevitable unless they straight out ban it, but it doesn't make any sense to do that.

People thought Google's mobile OS would be littered with OS-level ads as well, and that never happened. It's even less likely it will happen for the Google glasses, because if they sell the product themselves, they stand to make a lot more money in profit from the hardware (going by how exciting and innovative it is) than a few bucks per year they would get from ads (like they get now from each Android device).

</comment><comment><USER3> Btw, this is exactly the same reason I don't want an advertising company like Google to be involved in making my TV, videogame console, mobile phone, etc. Ads suck. :)</comment>


Scientists are about to unveil the first images of a supermassive black hole - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/9/18301276/event-horizon-telescope-supermassive-black-holes-images <comment><USER2> Taken with a potato telescope. I hope they don't create all this buzz and excite people and release a 4 pixel photo of blackness with some blurry center.

I say this because its been done many many times before...</comment>


Mandatory data retention becomes law in Australia - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/26/mandatory-data-retention-becomes-law-as-coalition-and-labor-combine

<comment><USER2> This is absolute crap, I'm still totally shocked this made it past the lower house let alone the senate. Australia is indeed run by idiots and sell outs.</comment>


Inside Facebook Messages' Application Server - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/inside-facebook-messages-application-server/10150162742108920 <comment><USER2> "A user's data is stored in a single row in HBase"

Some column families of HBase can be accumulated to hundreds of mega bytes very easily, I'm afraid...

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm really surprised to learn that they use Haystack here.

That's really cool for both Haystack and Django.

<comment><USER4> I think that's a different project; probably this: <http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=76191543919>

I think you're thinking of this: <http://haystacksearch.org/>

<comment><USER3> Ahhh... yes. thanks.

I was wondering what they were using as an indexer :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I made an app to help programmers improve their writing skills - <AUTHOR> http://www.codyromano.com/essayrec/

<comment><USER2> It's cool to see how a piece changed over time, but I don't quite understand how that helps improve writing. Perhaps it would help identify common mistakes, but the app is pretty much passive in terms of suggestions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. I find it helpful to revisit how word choice, paragraphs, etc., changed over time, but I agree that more direct suggestions would be useful. I'll brainstorm ways to include tips.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Demo video: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMz21tsberY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMz21tsberY)</comment>


Winning this game will give you a chance to earn a Netflix sub for 83 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.oldguardgame.com/ <comment><USER2> Assuming, of course, that Netflix lasts 83 more years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly what I thought when got to know about this. [°÷°]

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Second prize is a Netflix sub for 166 years.</comment>


Ask HN: Tool for creating app mockups? - <AUTHOR>

It's time for me to begin the design phase of my first startup and I'm thinking of Photoshop in order to test different colors.<p>I use html tables to show financial information and It'd be nice to use gradients. Plain colors don't look nice, at least the combinations that I had tried. <comment><USER2> CSS3 has gradient support in many modern browsers. Try using this tool to generate some CSS gradients that you can drop into your HTML tables to play with the colors: <http://gradients.glrzad.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!, it's a great way to play with different combinations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you thinking of designing or coloring?

Don't just start with 'what looks nice' - start with what you want to communicate and then do that. That's how you 'design'.

Btw, your question title didn't match your explanation. What exactly are you asking for?

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to communicate security but with a little of informality. I have the site layout and now I'm looking for the combination of colours to make it look nice.</comment></comment>


Are Google's New Play icon stupid? or Its just me? - <AUTHOR> Do you find the new Google Play Icons stupid? <comment><USER2> I don't think they are 'stupid'. I think in general the overall look and feel of applications, websites, etc is all very subjective. For example I really strongly dislike many aspects of Material Design even though most people seem to love it.

Also since they are constantly changing and tweaking things I've given up on constantly criticizing looks (or trying to customize things to suit my taste) and I just focus on usability and functionality. I only get upset when a user interface has become so poor that the former things suffer as a result.</comment>


Radicals and Visionaries: Chris Anderson vs. 37Signals - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2009/october/203404.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting how 37Signals is painted so well in this piece, and Chris Anderson only sounds like a lost child babbling about the internet. Personally, I find the arguments in 'Free' to be valuable to anybody that reads HN, but they should only be viewed as supplement to what we already know. 'Free' is not a business plan, and very few companies can pull it off in any purposeful way.

Mint does it well because they have an incredibly focused and niche market. If you are on their site, you are trying to be financially responsible, and your bank/debit/credit are all fundamentally attached to your account. Google did it well because they knew there was a huge well of oil waiting for them, they simply had to tap it right. Users often go to Google/search engines with the 'intent to buy', and this is where Facebook and Twitter fall short. It is consequentially rare that I am scouring my friends'/followers' pages on social networks with any intent to spend money.

<comment><USER2> Let's be clear: Facebook is cash flow positive entirely on advertisements.

No one is right about everything, all the time, in all circumstances. This is why we even _have_ business schools. You learn about a ton of options in a ton of situations and your job as a manager is to make the best call you can and try to execute to a good result.

Why would picking a business model be any different than deciding what framework/language/database/etc. to use?

<comment><USER3> But Facebook, with >300m users, is an edge case. It's a business model in the same way getting into acting in order to become as rich as Tom Cruise is a business model.

37Signals model of charging for a service, on the other hand, can at least appear reasonably replicable (though also much harder than it seems, if you don't have Fried's natural talent for marketing & PR)

<comment><AUTHOR> You are 100% correct. This is what I was trying to say, but a lot shorter and more eloquently put. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Freemium is a nice concept for me. Let's take two examples, Flickr and Dropbox.

I'm a heavy Flickr user, and their premium account is cheap, worth the price for me, and still a good deal for them. They still make money!

Let's talk about Dropbox. In fact, I don't use premium with them (I'd love to have a yearly 10GB plan for 30$ or 40$, but they just don't have it). I don't exceed more than 1GB used, and that's not a big spending for them. But I do attract some friends to their awesome service, and why not, some heavy users (did someone mention my dad?).

Free means satisfied users and word of mouth advertising, which is really underrated. And premium means money. Just make it worth the price, and "paint" a clear line between what's fair using free and what's worth paying.

</comment><comment><USER5> Pop Quiz. Whose website is this quote from:

 _"Read it free online

Absolutely free.

The complete book. 16 chapters and 91 essays.

Completely free to read online."_

<http://bit.ly/the_answer_is>

<comment><USER6> Except they're not giving their product away for free, they're only offering complimentary 'Kool Aid'.

<comment><USER7> They charged $20 for their pdf for a while, though, before they made it free. And it was never even a "real book" that you could buy in stores, with its very own ISBN, and all that.

<comment><USER8> And from what I remember, they made a ludicrous amount of money on that PDF.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What payment system do you use on your website? - <AUTHOR> If you make money either via sales or subscriptions, I'm wondering what payment system you use (i.e. Paypal or Visa) and why they are a good choice for you. <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure most people here will praise Stripe.

[https://stripe.com/docs/subscriptions](https://stripe.com/docs/subscriptions)

I usually work with Mollie, a Dutch payment provider (makes payments with CC, iDeal or Bitcoin a breeze).</comment>