Ask HN: Any Good Template(s) for a Startup Board Membership Agreement? - <AUTHOR> Have been looking for some reliable templates to draft a Board Membership Agreement for an Advisor (non-Executive).
Found this one from Stanford (https://sehub.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/BoardMemberContract.pdf) and one from SEC (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1396054/000107878214000572/f10k123113_ex10z16.htm) but not sure if these are the best out there.
For instance, they don't touch upon dilution and vesting.
It feels like something that YC should open source. <comment><USER2> So this is a circumstance where a non-investor is getting some equity for being an advisor and sitting on your board? Best practice would be a straight employment agreement - here's your responsibilities, your comp, expenses we cover, etc. You should also have by-laws, charters and policies&procedures for your board and its committees. You may find more examples if you search for compensation structures for independent board members - who are usually comped with a mix of equity and sitting fees.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly the circumstance.

Found this one from upcounsel; [https://www.upcounsel.com/advisory- agreement](https://www.upcounsel.com/advisory-agreement) and another one from Founder Institute; [https://fi.co/fast](https://fi.co/fast)

Will check if they'll do the job for now. Thanks for the tips and pointers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> An aside but if you're at the early stage where you're looking for docs like this on HN, I wouldn't make an advisor a board member. You want an agreement that lays out their stock grant and vesting schedule and lays out agreed terms for advising, that's it.</comment>


Ask HN: Non-Compete on remote jobs - <AUTHOR> I've been working remote for the past three years.
I've never hard to sign a non-compete.
I got an offer for an okay position, it's not the best and my state (Florida) is pretty strong on workers rights on invalidating non-competes if anything happens.
But I'm sickened at this: "I will not directly as owner, partner, stockholder, director, consultant, agent, employee or otherwise engage, participate or invest in any business activity anywhere in the world that performs similar-- blah blah blah.
It's enforceable right?
What do I do? Sign my name knowing it can't be used against me? Or bring it up with HR and cross it out?
The former option is what I normally do, but I'm sick of just accepting what HR says. <comment><USER2> > I'm sick of just accepting what HR says.

The HR flunky did not create the boilerplate legal language in your agreement. Their role is purely administrative at this point. In their world, you're just another contractor/vendor to be processed.

Ultimately, you decide with whom you work and by what terms. Generally speaking, smaller firms are more accepting of contractor submitted proposals/contracts. If you have any sales ability, you can always go find a new client.

</comment><comment><USER3> It might be enforceable, depending.

How broad is it? Sometimes it's like "not competing with any vendors' business" and then if your company uses GMail you can't do _anything_ Google does. Sometimes it's not a big deal.

I have been able to negotiate better non-competes in the past by pushing back, admittedly with smaller companies. Often response will be "but our lawyer says it's fine": good guy/bad guy kinda scenario. In which case I hired my own lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER4> It depends on where the contract designates the court of arbitration/which jurisdiction disputes will be settled. So yes it can be enforced.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's non-enforceable, right*.

Sigh, can't spell.</comment>


Please Help: Educational Apps for Handicapped Children - <AUTHOR> http://www.tommyteaches.com/special-education.php

<comment><USER2> Thumbs up for this app for children. Will help countless children who have problems learning.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very worthy cause, just get the extra hardware insurance</comment>


ITunes Match: $24.99/year for your non-iTunes songs - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/06/apple-announces-itunes-in-the-cloud/

<comment><USER2> iTunes Match is amnesty for pirates. It looks like you can take a library of questionably-licensed songs and turn them into DRM-Free fully licensed AAC for $25/year.

While I'm going to have to dig through the full TOS to make sure there aren't any gotchas, this looks like a cost-effective way for Apple to bring unlicensed music into the paid ecosystem at a price that's fair for both sides.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty excited about it. They waited until they created what is arguably the best solution of all and stuck a nice simple price on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> But what happens to all those new fancy cloud files on your PC/Mac when your subscription runs out?

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like the Lala acquisition paid off.</comment>


Sonic and ultrasonic attacks damage hard drives and crash OSes - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/05/attackers-can-send-sounds-to-ddos-video-recorders-and-pcs/ <comment><USER2> Imagine taking a dog whistle and sticking it in your ass in a datacenter, after eating Mexican meals for dinner last evening.</comment>


Digital Equipment answers a user's complaint that the year 2000 should not be a leap year. - <AUTHOR> http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/decly.htm

<comment><USER2> FTA: "Although one can never be sure of what will happen at some future time, there is strong historical precedent for presuming that the present Gregorian calendar will still be in effect by the year 2000. Since we also hope that VMS will still be around by then, we have chosen to adhere to these precedents."

The writer proved remarkably prescient but,alas, Digital Equipment Corporation was not there to greet the new millennium.

<comment><USER3> Poor, DEC! VMS made the trek, though.

<comment><USER4> I remember the day the Compaq takeover was announced.

Oh boy. I knew that day the Alpha was doomed. Pitty... Such a promising achitecture.

Well... Back to my x86... I have work to do.

<comment><USER5> By the end, and even the last few years, the Alpha was no longer as fast as competing processors for the vast majority of workloads. The x86 architecture had become RISC behind the scenes and Intel and AMD had figured out ways to accelerate CISC to the point where it may have even been a net win for performance (or at least not a significant loss...smaller numbers of instructions had to traverse the slow RAM to CPU bus, and could then be "decompressed" into fast executing but more verbose instructions all within the CPU pipeline, where the bus was dramatically faster--raw clock speed had just caught up to the Alpha, but performance was significantly better, and by 2003 when the last ever Alpha clocked at 1.3GHz the Athlon 64 was released with clocks up to 2GHz). Others, like Sun and IBM and others, had made more progress on the parallelization and shared memory fronts, as well, making Alpha less useful for scientific and other large scale computing work.

Finally, the Alpha technology was sold off to Intel. The advantages of the architecture (and some of the engineers involved) have been assimilated into the CPU borg. It may be ugly, due to such a long and sordid history, but the x86 architecture is now wicked fast. Also the Alpha had elephantine power and cooling requirements. My last company once attended an event where we setup our boxes side by side with a competitors Alpha-based systems, and they had discreetly placed a box fan behind their biggest unit, because, without it, the ambient temperature of the room was too high for the Alpha box to operate reliably. Their box was much faster than ours though. I asked if they included a box fan, or if that cost extra.

But don't let me stand in the way of nostalgia. I, too, remember staring in awe at a DEC that was running at 400MHz, when the Intel architectures were still stumbling along at 166, or something along those lines (and with a dramatically slower bus, and only dual CPU capability in the Pentium Pro).

<comment><USER6> Are you sure? I don't have the numbers handy, but I dimly remember that, in around 1998-1999, the Alpha 21264 ran circles around Intel and AMD CPUs of the same era, in integer and especially floating-point performance. I'm not talking about clock speed, but SPEC benchmark results.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I'm sure. The only date I specifically mentioned was 2003, which is when the last Alpha was released and the 64 bit x86 architecture became available. In 1998-1999 the Alpha was still probably in the lead on all counts except possibly price/performance. Things move fast in CPUs, and a significant lead one year can turn into a trailing position the very next.

<comment><USER4> Well... By 2003 the Alpha has been more or less abandoned in terms of R&D expenditures. It's impossible to estimate how much of its perceived lack of relative performance was due to progresses in x86 designs and how much was simply due to a lack of research in progressing the architecture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That sort of response well before Wikipedia is quite impressive!

</comment><comment><USER8> Years divisible by 100 are normally not leap years, UNLESS they are divisible by 400.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_year#Algorithm>

I knew about the 100, didn't realize the 400 though until I looked into it. The response is comical, but you can understand where the user got confused.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well that was certainly entertaining to read... I can only imagine the user on the other end of this being like...=O touche...I also learned about how the calendar came to be because of that! So, another plus.

Does anyone else think its interesting that throughout history there have been numerous... "this isn't working for me, lets just skip some days and it'll be okay!" Heck, this may not even really be there year 2008.

</comment><comment><USER10> _They knew that a lunation (the time from one full moon to the next) was 29 1/2 days long, so their lunar year had a duration of 364 days. This fell short of the solar year by about 11 days._

Isn't something wrong here?

<comment><USER11> Yeah. The lunar year is 351 days, as-is the case with the modern Islamic calendar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "By imperial decree, one year was made 445 days long to bring the calendar back in step with the seasons."

Er, is that right?

<comment><USER11> Another interesting tid-bit for the comments:

The year 1582 didn't have Oct. 5th through Oct. 14th (inclusive). They just skipped from the fourth of October to the fifteenth!

<comment><USER13> Which resulted in widespread violence when landlords tried to make their tenants pay a full month's rent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What I'd like to read is the customer's reply to the reply :)

<comment><USER11> If that were me, my reply would be to go out and by another DEC :)</comment></comment>


How lobbyists are keeping the public in the dark about broadband - <AUTHOR> http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/03/18/follow_that_por.html

<comment><USER2> Methinks the goddess doesn't understand very well how money flows, and how external forces like government regulation are what distort the market.

 _state grantees getting paid to collect the information are expected to get some of their data from the Federal Communications Commission, begging the question - why not require the FCC to create the map and save $350 million?_

She also seems to assume that when the government does something, it's free. How can she not realize that if the FCC does something, it needs to pay its employees, etc. If the FCC doesn't need to do it, then it needs fewer employees, and we can all save on taxes?

<comment><USER3> Given how little government involvement there is relative to other nations that are building faster networks than us, I highly doubt Government regulation is what's holding us back. The US has significantly less red tape involved in building out nationwide infrastructure than countries like Sweden, Japan, and South Korea.

Is there some supernatural market force that amplifies US bureaucracy over these other countries? I guess that depends on whether or not you consider lobbyists the super-heroes of Democracy.

<comment><USER2> _I highly doubt Government regulation is what's holding us back._

I said that regulations _distort_ the market, which is precisely true. The result of the distortion might be to retard the market, or to cause over- investment that accelerates the market; I suspect that's the case in the countries you cite.

Just because they're getting more broadband faster does not mean that they're better off overall. It may be that there are other, more important investments that are being made in the USA, but those other countries won't benefit because they squandered their money on universal ultrafast broadband.

Of course, it's difficult to impossible to prove this either way. The market is a mind-bogglingly complex emergent system, and like a neural net, you can't fully reverse-engineer any particular piece of it. The fact that money acts as a communication mechanism, carrying information about the relative importance and substitutability of goods, allows the market to dynamically adapt to what the participants actually want (as demonstrated by their wallets), rather than what is forced on them from above.</comment></comment></comment>


LoRaWAN packet received at record distance of 702 km - <AUTHOR> https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/article/ground-breaking-world-record-lorawan-packet-received-at-702-km-436-miles-distance <comment><USER2> So, this raises a question I've been meaning to ask for a while. Let's say you want to transmit a very small amount of information over a very long distance (say 80 bytes over a minimum distance of hundreds to thousands of kilometers.) What options are there that are relatively small-sized?

Let's say maximum receiver size is roughly 10cm by 10cm, and power consumption can't be over 10 watts, but the "base station" can be as large and powerful as you want.

[edit] cause this is getting some upvotes, here's some thinking I was doing: you can't go through the ground (unless you're at ultra low frequencies and those need antennas measured in tens of kilometers long). So you pretty much have to bounce stuff off the atmosphere, right? When you see stuff like this [0], with thousands of kilometers of range, I imagine that's what happening. Especially as that's 10MHz, which is 30 meters wavelength, which bounces off the atmosphere pretty well IIRC. The only thing with that is that the powers are incredibly low and the antennas are huge. What if you increased the power but decreased the antenna size, for example a 10cm x 10cm antenna with 10W? 100W? 1kW? Would transmissions across thousands of kilometers still be possible?

<comment><USER3> What you are describing there is basically longwave AM radio broadcasting. Large transmitter, small transistor radio receiver.

Low speed data can be and is sent using such transmitters, it is done by phase modulating the carrier. The data can be used to switch electrical appliances on and off.

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

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

Droitwich puts out 500kW and reception range is on the order of 1000km.

<comment><USER2> Right, but that's only one direction. I thought I put it in my comment, but I'm only curious about bidirectional stuff. The best path forward here seems to be WSPR- like stuff, but that requires larger transmitters on the order of tens of meters.

<comment><USER3> That's the problem, an asymmetry in transceiver size does not really lend itself to bidirectional unless its relatively short distances like cellular phone networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. Both the receiving and transmitting antennas were omnidirectional. There's no problem doing this with a dish pointed at a dish, but that low power without directional antennas is impressive.

<comment><USER5> Ho ho, is nothing! Try 7,869km, transmitting at 10 milliwatts. The transmitter? A couple passives attached to a GPIO pin on a raspberry pi: [https://gerolfziegenhain.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/raspi- as-w...](https://gerolfziegenhain.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/raspi-as-wspr- transmitter/)

The catch is, thanks to Shannon of course, bandwidth. WSPR will do something like 1.46 baud. That and the 13 meter long antenna.

<comment><USER6> Try hundreds of meters deep in seawater, all around the earth:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines#Extremely_low_frequency)

Bandwidth is even worse though (<<1 baud), and don't start on antenna length.

<comment><USER7> How about while drilling 1000s of meters underground? How do you transmit data back to the surface? This is a problem faced by oil drilling and exploration companies, and they have a solution for it. Take a guess what it is...

Mud modulation.

Basically, while drilling, mud is pumped down the drill string and back out for cooling and cleaning purposes.

Some genius at one of the major oil drilling companies (maybe Schlumberger?) came up with the crazy idea of modulating the mud pressure to transmit information into the depths of the earth. You can control the drill bit speed, angle of drilling, and monitor all sorts of diagnostics over a mud-based communication channel. The bandwidth is decent (think: dial-up), especially when the drilling tools use an efficient modulation scheme.

It's amazing stuff to see first-hand.

<comment><USER8> That's... both crazy and ingenious in one package. I love it.

<comment><USER9> >both crazy and ingenious in one package.

wait until you see the NSA mud-pipe-tap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good stuff, HAAT(height above average terrain) always makes a big difference.

I regularly see APRS packets of 120mi+, although probably at a lot more power. The current record seems to be near ~2,000 mile[1] bounced from the ISS.

[1] - [http://qrznow.com/new-iss-packet-distance-record- claimed/](http://qrznow.com/new-iss-packet-distance-record-claimed/)

<comment><USER11> Might just be me, but I read this as ~2 kilometers, rather than the intended ~2,000 miles.

<comment><USER10> Haha good catch fixed that, meant 2,000 miles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On the higher speed front: has anyone looked into 802.11ah (900mhz wifi) or any of the smart "TV white space" stuff? It's standardized but I can't find any hardware on the market. There is a company near us (Irvine, CA) that apparently has an 802.11ah chipset but no cards or USB versions and emails go strangely unanswered. Found them since they had a press release about hitting like a few tens of megabits at over a kilometer on very low power and a small omnidirectional antenna.

<comment><USER13> Motorola (Canopy) used to make a bunch of 900 MHz (ISM) radios that were popular with WISPs. They weren't technically Wi-Fi but a proprietary protocol.

I can't recall if Ubiquiti ever had any 900 MHz radios or not but they have plenty in the 2.4/5 GHz (unlicensed) bands as well as the 3.65 GHz (licensed) bands that would probably serve your needs for cheap. Unfortunately, the 900 MHz band is getting quite crowded these days, leading to lots of interference and reduced "throughput".

Mimosa is another (younger) company making similar gear that's relatively cheap with good bang for the buck.

A place I do some work for has several 15-20 mile links (6/11 GHz) pushing ~500 Mbps although those are much more expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> From a balloon in almost 40km altitude. Still impressive but nowhere as impressive as I read this headline. I thought this was ground to ground...

<comment><USER10> Ground-to-ground is limited by the curvature of the earth(unless you're bouncing things off the atmosphere like with HF radio). Generally even with a repeater on a mountain nearby the best you can expect is ~100mi.

<comment><USER15> There are many spots on the Earth with longer LoS views. Here is an interesting list along with photographs people have made of them: [https://beyondhorizons.eu/lines-of-sight/](https://beyondhorizons.eu/lines- of-sight/)

The longest one with a photograph is 443km (275mi).

<comment><USER16> Comments like this are why I still read hacker news.

<comment><USER17> IIRC the above link was the frontpage not that long ago. Very interesting

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's great. I am wondering what was the throughput at that distance...

<comment><USER19> It's LoRa, so probably 50-ish byte packet transmitted at 800-ish bits per second.

<comment> ju-st How many channels does LoRa have?

<comment><USER19> It is variable-bandwith spread spectrum modulation, so talking about discrete channels does not make that much sense. But each of frequency bands it operates in is notionally divided into 9-11 uplink and downlink channels.

The modulation scheme is essentially FM with a twist: high bitrate mode is essentially straight FSK and lower rate modes are FM modulated with sawtooth, which is or is not inverted in each period depending on the transmitted bit. The idea is essentially same as various QRP modes involving painting images on waterfall diagram. (Full gateway nodes receive full band and can track ~50 transmitting nodes at once)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is the most "out there" thread, involving emerging technology, that I've seen on HN in a while.</comment>


This is what happened to online journalism [pic] - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/gQouk.jpg <comment><USER2> Take matters into your own hands: <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

Instapaper is good for mitigating the viewport creep too

</comment><comment><USER3> ... which is why adblock browser features are much more popular than they used to be. They are possibly digging their own graves...

</comment><comment><USER4> Needs a third frame: projected to a few years from now. Probably one tweet- sized headline on a page full of ads and rants. :(</comment>


The Swedish Exception? - <AUTHOR> https://bppblog.com/2020/04/23/the-swedish-exception/ <comment><USER2> Important anekdote, since I live in Belgium and a lot of people ( eg a president) are not aware of it.

Contrary to popular believe, we are not doing that bad.

The only difference is, is that we also count "suspected" cases instead of confirmed cases. Which causes a bigger number of cases versus other countries.

As a concrete example, that means 2264 confirmed cases versus the 4400 in the statistics

An online source ( but I was already aware of it): [https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/belgium-all- news/1064...](https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/belgium-all- news/106454/coronavirus-why-belgium-also-counts-suspected-deaths/)</comment>


Hacker News – HTML5 mobile friendly layout - <AUTHOR> http://hn.premii.com/

<comment><USER2> This is great, thanks!</comment>


Guidance on Performing Retrospectives - <AUTHOR> http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2017/12/26/guidance-on-performing-retrospectives/ <comment><USER2> It's likely just a wording thing, but what is talked as a retrospective here, we call a blameless postmortem at my current company. And we have an ever evolving template we use to share the timeline, root cause, learnings & action items.

The one thing I would add to the article is spend time to calculate the business impact of the incident and start the retrospective with this. This is something that might not be that straightforward for engineers to know and might need help from other people within the company to understand. How many customers were impacted and in what way? E.g. if you had an outage on your web site where people could not check out, how many orders did you lose and what was the total value? The answer will depend if people completed their order after the outage was over, if they could use e.g. the mobile app that time and so on. Pinpointing the business impact can help understand just how severe that specific outage was (and how that part of the system is connected with everything else).

<comment><USER3> Author here: We explicitly moved away from postmortem at Heroku and follow the same at Citus Data because postmortem has references essentially to something having died. The blameless part of a postmortem helps, but blaming something is separate from the idea of examining something that has been killed. There is a ton of value in emphasizing the blameless part though, so very noted.

The business impact is something that is important, and we often do measure. I often aimed to separate two somewhat as leading with that can create some unintended consequence of aiming to point blame/etc.

<comment><USER4> That is a very literal interpretation of post"mortem" to which I don't subscribe in this context. The Oxford Shorter English dictionary I have on this iPad also includes this definition: "An analysis or discussion conducted after the conclusion of a game, examination, or other event." (I won't get involved in a discussion of what a dictionary is or what its purpose is, sorry.)

I also like and use the term postmortem to mean what this author calls retrospectives, and use the term retrospective to mean a more general look back without being event-based.</comment></comment></comment>


The developer's guide to browser adoption rates - <AUTHOR> http://www.netmagazine.com/features/developers-guide-browser-adoption-rates

<comment><USER2> At first I was like :D

Then I was like :|

And then I was like :C

IE is a cancer.</comment>


Student seeking suggestion for summer intern in a startup - <AUTHOR>

I am a CS graduate student just came to the US. I have been reading HN for a few month. And I found a lot of intern positions here. Most of them looks fantastic. However, I have no idea about how to find a startup that may be the best fit for me to stay during this summer. Is anyone have some good suggestion? Thank you I think I am like this:
+ I have a few opensource projects, but not got big at all.
+ I have solid algorithm knowledge that able to address most
  problem we may encounter in practice
+ I have good debug skills that learned from experiences
  (~150,000 LOC)
+ I have a good taste of writing beautiful code
+ My language proficiency: C > C++ > C# > Python > Java
+ I have a little experience about OpenGL and OpenCV as well as CUDA
+ I am the first group student pass Peter Norvig's Introduction to AI Advanced Track
+ I took Andrew Ng's Machine Learning open class and Sebastian Thrun's
  Programming a Robotic Car open class, but haven't really finished them all.
+ I use Vim and Latex. But I like sublime text 2 too
+ I like Machine Learning, Computer Vision and a responsive "Cloud"
+ And I love startup. And even if I am a good self-starter, I asked good questions.
- I hate PHP. And I will never do any stuff in J2EE.
- I don't do iOS and don't like to do UI for that. (But I am currently working
  on my independent project with interesting interaction between iPhones)
- I am not interested in JS. I am basically a back front guy.
  But, I am interested in WebGL.
- I think data visualization have been went too much to its original
  purpose - show (useful) info clearly to readers. What I saw is just
  a bunch of fancy and god knows stuff
- I am not a OS geek.
+ HOWEVER, if anything make me excited, all the shits above is not important.
  I will do anything to get it out in front of the world.

  Thank you again if you read all this. Your response would be very helpful for me.
 <comment><USER2> I would suggest that you do not aim to work at a startup (they need generalist that can hit the ground running). Look for a more established company and you will have better results.

Hope that helps

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you for your reply. Could you provide the reasons that you suggest me to not to work for a startup? Thanks

<comment><USER2> You could work for a startup for sure, . You mentioned Python, a number of positions are available if you can show previous work in Python.

I would recommend in the future posts that you include a github account and/or any way to show previous history (like past employers)</comment></comment></comment>


Are we alone? SF is as sure a guide as any - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/20/are-we-alone-sf-science-fiction-speculative-jeff-vandermeer <comment><USER2> The embedded YouTube video extends the article. It's worth a listen if the article was interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Extended essay for the speech: [http://electricliterature.com/are-we- alone/](http://electricliterature.com/are-we-alone/)</comment></comment>


China overtakes US in AI startup funding w a focus on facial recognition, chips - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/22/17039696/china-us-ai-funding-startup-comparison <comment><USER2> Shouldn't these startups be referred to as public surveillance, rather than AI, startups?</comment>


The Path to Dijkstra's Handwriting - <AUTHOR> https://joshldavis.com/2013/05/20/the-path-to-dijkstras-handwriting/ <comment><USER2> Reading _One Thousand and One Arabian Nights_ , some years back, one element of the stories that stood out was the emphasis many of the characters put not merely in their writing skills (literacy being uncommon, and hence distinguishing), but also in their knowledge of multiple scripts. Literacy was not _just_ the ability to write.

It's one of those details I've always meant to return to, to see what the background to that practice was, of the scripts and their diffferences, and of the connotations of each. Also of the significance of meaning at different levels: fonts or handwritten script, words, sentence structure, narrative, style. It all hangs together.

As any afficionado, or foe, of fonts, say, Papayrus or Comic Sans, can tell you, the forms of letters does carry meaning and significance.

(I had a literal laugh-out-loud moment reading Pivoxy's config file and realising it specifies comin sans as the default font for its Windows console log output.)</comment>


Everything you always wanted to know about Deep Learning but were afraid to ask - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.01395 <comment><USER2> Are you sure you submitted the intended link there? [https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.01395](https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.01395) is an application of deep learning to identify bull sperm-cells.

<comment><USER3> Think this was a deliberate prank post.

Important research though >_<</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Was My Post Stealth Banned? - <AUTHOR> I just posted this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20287021 I can see it on the newest page when logged in but not in incognito. It doesn't show as flagged or dead when I'm logged in.
I mistakenly named the post "8 Tips for Smoother Code Review" because that was the article name. I then realized that starting a post with a number is against HN guidelines. I quickly changed the name to "Some Tips for Smoother Code Review". But the post is still invisible.
Am I doing something wrong? This post seems relevant to the HN community.
Can I delete it and repost it or will that make me look like a spammer? <comment><USER2> It shows up as [dead] on my end, as does this thread. You might want to contact the moderators and convince them you're not a spammer. Your most recent links all seem to be promoting your own content, so maybe that's what they took issue with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.Is promoting your own content frowned upon even if the content is relevant to HN and created in good faith?

<comment><USER3> Users submitting their own websites or blog posts is absolutely normal (and expected). I'd say a previous submission got flagged and with very low karma (upvotes, <5) there was some kind of threshold which puts all new submissions on hold ([dead]) until another user with high karma vouches for it. I'm not a moderator, it's my observation only. Blog post is relevant, just seems to have falled through the cracks when nobody vouched fast enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the explanation and the vouch. I think I had a post a few years ago that got flagged because I was more naive about posting on HN back then (guess I'm still pretty naive :)).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


National Security Telecommunications – Information Infrastructure Report (1999) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Information%20Infrastructure%20Group%20Report_1999.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: Selectively abbreviated title since the full one was 50% over HN's character limit.</comment>


A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/1033032915175858176 <comment><USER3> One thing that separates entrepreneurs from normal people is they aren't afraid of having stupid ideas. A good 90% of the ideas on this list, particularly the early ones, are laughable and are ideas you wouldn't catch a serious individual dead trying to come up with. Some people try from the start to be perfect and always fail because they don't understand you need dumb little ideas to be an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER4> So true! I'll be the first to tell you the _vast_ majority of those ideas were objectively terrible but every single one of them taught me _something_.

<comment><USER5> I really enjoyed seeing the list, Josh, and I appreciate the share via Twitter and here. My guess is that there are several serial entrepreneurs on Hacker News, and like myself, definitely can identify with your efforts.

<comment><USER4> Thanks so much!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand this spray and pray approach to business - I'm not businessman so I may be talking out my ass - but I would have thought business is like a long term relationship. May as well have a spreadsheet of 50 failed marriages. If you aren't in it for the long haul what are you doing?

<comment><USER7> What he called "business" others (myself included) would call "side projects" until one of such projects would evolve into "business".

You have to start somewhere and try things out to find a business bringing revenue. And yes, it is "spray and pray" in essence. And I see nothing wrong with it. (probably because I tried to launch a similar number if not more of such "businesses"/projects and continue doing so)

<comment><USER8> He made 50 websites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm jealous that he's made so many things, surprised by the small amount of money they've been sold for, and unsure whether this is someone I should emulate or someone I should view as a cautionary tale.

<comment><USER10> "Working hard will not guarantee that you will be successful, but I guarantee you, that all successful people worked hard."

\- Coach Kamogawa thru George Morikawa

<comment><USER11> Honestly, I'm not really sure if that's really true any more.

I wasn't working hard when I bought Bitcoin at three bucks a coin. I was just intellectually curious. If anything when I was working hard was two years before that on a soon to be failed startup. We crawled the web for ads just before the ad business went hyper targeted. I made -$20k from working hard.

I made a lot more from Bitcoin. I would have made way more if I'd put that $20k in Bitcoin and slacked off at some day job.

I guess I don't really follow my own advice though, as I'm presently working on a Sunday morning and I've only taken like two days off this month.

Edit:

Writing this comment briefly made me re-consider my whole life and I've come to the conclusion that being lucky and prescient observations are more likely if you've worked hard _at some point_. I did do an engineering degree with some economics electives at the best school in Canada, and understanding Satoshi's paper wouldn't have been possible without this background knowledge.

<comment><USER12> How did you sell Bitcoin? For cash? Was it dangerous?

<comment><USER11> Well I mostly got out at $200 because I thought competent people regulated our economies and figured crypto would be banned by regulators, so it was pretty easy to spread it out over a couple wires. The remaining chunk I sold at the $10k-$20k window. I still think it could hit $50k/coin, but it was too large a percent of my assets and I figured I'd already made such a crazy return (1000x on average I think?) that squeezing out another 4x or 5x seemed reckless.

If only I hadn't been relatively broke when I bought in. I was suffering burn- out and basically working odd contracts here and there to keep the lights on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Haha, I love this list. I wish I remembered all the stuff I did. In the early days (2003) I was doing flash games on newgrounds. Later turned to a hockey card store. Then I tried a million-dollar-pixel ads clone (made nothing, big surprise).

I also wasted too much time on stupid shit I never even launched. Like 1yr on a flash game of my dog (never launched). Another year on a site for musicians that never had a name or domain. A year on a bike rental directory. Another on a CMS for mobile sites (yeah m.domain sites, my timing sucked). A year or more on a trello-like project management app that sucked but launched with 100 beta users.

I also did 10-20 launch pages for testing marketable ideas. Most didnt work, and a few that did I didnt want to do (stuff like automated browser testing).

All that before hitting a product I've spent the last 4 years taking to six figures. So yeah, results vary. But I love this list. Brings back my good memories of wondering when I'd make more then 5 bucks on something that wasn't freelancing.

<comment><USER13> Oh I forgot. My "big break" product was actually from a mentor who needed the prduct. Had nothing to do with me hunting it down. Kind of funny actually. I can't really tell you what the secret to any success it accept seems that the more you work in the direction you want to go the closer you get. But some of it is just luck. Don't have any strong opinions for you.

<comment><USER14> > I can't really tell you what the secret to any success

You just did ;)

Right here:

> My "big break" product was actually from a mentor who needed the prduct. Had > nothing to do with me hunting it down.

That's one of the great secrets to success right there, build something that you already know someone needs. Considerably reduces the role of the luck factor and guess-work.

<comment><USER13> True, you hit the nail on the head. All the new businesses I start (nowadays) comes down to: do we already have customers? Is there a real (proven) demand for this?

Bottom line, can we prove that this won't be a waste of time?

This is why I don't open the text editor and start new stuff that I come up with now days. I'm too traumatized from all the lessons I've learned to do that. Getting above water is the biggest hurtle. After that you realize that you don't need to touch anything that risks going nowhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Amazon affiliate sites

I think this is a completely different mindset compared to engineers/"nerds", that's why most of us work for others instead of starting our own businesses.

<comment><USER3> There is nothing wrong with working for others if it fulfills you. I envy people who can have comfortable lives with happy families and a simple desk job that pays for what they need. Something in my brain is telling me I need more or I won't be happy, so I have many startups I'm working on and have exclusively begun working for myself. The grass is always greener on the other side, that much I can say. Enjoy your comfy engineering job and be careful what you wish for.

If you are a nerd who wants to break into entrepreneurship, prepare for a lot of fun, but also prepare to do work you think is stupid or never saw yourself doing, only for it to end up as a niche product. That's fine.

<comment><USER16> This! - I'm in a similar space myself. At once envious of those happy with a decent day job - corp or whatever (one of my good buddies is a "garbage man" and he seems pretty damn happy).

A year into struggling as an entrepreneur and no longer working at BigCo - <USER2> couldn't be happier despite having to live with a crazy amount of anxiety :)

<comment><USER15> And there is that middle-ground of being an independent consultant from where it is even harder to make a step, especially when taking in count your own hourly rate :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> These are mostly failed consumber businesses until Baremetrics, which had $100k in recurring revenue last month.

[https://demo.baremetrics.com/](https://demo.baremetrics.com/)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is inspiring: the dominant culture today is "oh yeah, it's going great".

One quote that has stuck in my mind is from Chuck Jones, quoting his own prof at RISD: "You have 10,000 bad paintings in you. The sooner you get them out the sooner you'll get to the good ones."

I eventually learned to just let that dumb idea (weld, program, drawing) get out. Some good ideas fail, and most bad ideas fail, but sometimes you can only tell which it was (good or bad) after the fact.

<comment><USER19> And some bad ideas succeed. Flappy Bird and ship your enemies glitter come to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hey shpigford - curious how you made a living during this time? Was it via these apps/projects/businesses? Freelancing? Day job?

And kudos again. Great list.

<comment><USER4> From 2003-2013 I split my time with consulting. Did ~300 client projects over that time period.

</comment></comment><comment> j-f-t They are more akin to projects than businesses. The majority of the businesses could be categorized as small web apps and Amazon affiliates. Most appear like he didn't find a problem to solve, but tried to create a solution. There also doesn't appear to be much thought given to market size for each product.

<comment><USER4> The title of the spreadsheet is "Josh Pigford's Absurd List of Products, Apps, Websites & Businesses"...they definitely weren't all full on "businesses" and the large majority of them were terrible ideas. I definitely don't recommend most people go the route I did. :)

<comment><USER21> Which route would you recommend instead?

<comment><USER4> No clue. Everybody's route is different. This is just how I've figured things out (and I'd still say there are many things I definitely have _not_ figured out).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I interviewed Josh for my book, The Parallel Entreprener (on Kindle etc), and can attest that he's done all this experimentation for the love of the game.

For some of us the glory is not in the exit but rather in the building.

</comment><comment><USER23> Feels like he doesn't give the businesses enough time to gain popularity. Some of them were clearly not bad ideas, like the ad management one.

<comment><USER24> I noticed the same thing. The one that jumped out to me was something like, sold before it launched for $10000. Why would you build something and take 10 grand instead of launching it? Desperation?

<comment><USER25> I would gladly take $10k and move on to my next project over building, marketing, sales, etc., with no promise of a return. He obviously enjoys the inception/building phase and that time he got to build and then cash out with very little investment. If I was very confident that my idea would take off, I'd reject early offers and go for it. However, for many of us, everything after the building phase is like pulling teeth. For others, its great. But I definitely relate to that decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hey shpigford, I am curious about this terrible CPA that led to a $10k IRS bill. If you had to look for a new CPA can you tell me what you would look for and what would be warning signs?

Also, great list! Did some of those affiliate sites make money even though you eventually shut them down and didn't sell them?

<comment><USER4> Main thing is finding a CPA who has _some_ experience with the type of business you're running. Freelancer, Corporation, etc...find a CPA who can speak the language.

It's less an issue now, but 10+ years ago, there were a lot of CPAs who didn't have much/any experience with internet-based businesses and so they weren't familiar with some of the additional bits to take in to account.

As for affiliate sites...I probably made a grand total of 50 cents from them...total. :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Kudos on the transparency.

Where did you find your buyers?

<comment><USER4> Flippa for all except TheAppleBlog.

<comment><USER28> Was there a lot of legal required (paperwork and lawyers) for Tutorial Outpost for $19k?

<comment><USER4> Not at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Really interesting, thanks for sharing this.

Why is it called Cedar & Sail when (as far as I can tell) it has nothing to do with either of those things? :p

In any case, congrats on hitting it big with Baremetrics!

<comment><USER4> I need to come up with an elaborate story on the name...alas I just picked two words that I thought sounded interesting together and BOOM, done. :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Am I meant to be able to expand columns in this? It seems like I should be able to given that there's a lot half hidden content, yet I can't work out how to.

<comment><USER31> Change the url so you aren't looking at the html view: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ro4QYK1raqu3pNFMAjP9...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ro4QYK1raqu3pNFMAjP9vSOft- WndIS6nn5q4JU8TPc/edit#gid=0)

Then 'File', 'Make a copy' and you can edit and resize as desired.

<comment><USER30> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can you share more info about how you sold some these businesses?

<comment><USER4> Listed them on Flippa! The end. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> thanks for sharing. Cool idea. (PS we're a baremetrics customer - keep up the great work! :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks so much!

</comment></comment><comment> real-hacker Why are the Amazon affiliate sites so unsuccessful? Are there too many of them? or what?</comment>


Panasonic's New Human Blinders for Open Offices - <AUTHOR> https://www.dezeen.com/2018/10/17/panasonics-wearable-blinkers-concentrate-open-plan-offices-technology/ <comment><AUTHOR> When I first read this my reaction was immediately, is this what we've come to? My next thought was that I should tell our office manager to order a dozen of these to try them out. Also, they're going the crowdfunding route first, but in Japan initially [https://greenfunding.jp/lab/projects/2463](https://greenfunding.jp/lab/projects/2463)</comment>


All RGB colors in one image - <AUTHOR> http://joco.name/2014/03/02/all-rgb-colors-in-one-image/ <comment><USER2> The SE thread linked in the post is really worth the read: [http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/22144/images- wit...](http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/22144/images-with-all- colors)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's actually a community of all-RGB pic creators: [http://allrgb.com/](http://allrgb.com/)

<comment><USER4> This is one of the most bizarre things I've seen in a long time.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Very psychedelic, I'd say.

<comment><USER5> haha..years ago when I used to do Win32/MFC development I was in the habit of writing code that painted random pixel colors on my windows desktop...you get the psychedelic effect if you don't do bit-block transfers but paint directly to the screen...it was always a fun time wasting activity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Site is 508'ing. Here's a partial mirror.

[http://archive.is/nZwxl](http://archive.is/nZwxl)

Embedded youtube video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuvFsB4SLhA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuvFsB4SLhA)

<comment><USER6> I was able to get it to load, and pull it down. Here's a temporary mirror on my own webserver:

[http://b.enjam.info/rgb](http://b.enjam.info/rgb)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While the site's down, here's all the RGB colors in one book:

[http://i.imgur.com/kae66HY.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/kae66HY.jpg)

('RGB Colorspace Atlas' by Tauba Auerbach)

</comment><comment><USER8> Server seems to be down but found the Google cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ghZGR0R...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ghZGR0R_23sJ:joco.name/2014/03/02/all- rgb-colors-in-one-image/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER9> Some of these images in their most basic form are strikingly beautiful. It reminds me of some algorithmic art Joshua Davis produces. ( [http://www.joshuadavis.com](http://www.joshuadavis.com) )

The OP might consider a more art based context with a potential for high priced prints and gallery showings.

<comment><USER10> Reminds me of some of the art in demoscene productions too. Since each image containing all RGB colours is just a different permutation of the same pixels, it might make for an interesting effect to animate pixel-swapping to transform one into another.

Unfortunately at present there's no single monitor that can show all the pixels of a 4096x4096 image individually...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Server seems unavailable :(

There was a challenge a friend of mine and I had a while back: take an image, and represent the entire RGB colorspace within that image, without reusing any colors.

It was a REALLY fun challenge, and I encourage everybody to try it as well.

The way that I ended up winning (ha) was to represent the RGB colorspace as a 3D array, and then unravel that 3D array into a 1D skip-list.

The script read the pixel value at (n,n) of the image, "decide" where this would exist if RGB was unraveled into 1D, go that that spot, and then either set the color in the "new" image (if that color was unused) the value in the array, or read the "skip" destination: the place where the closest unused color was located.

I believe this was the site that inspired us: [http://allrgb.com](http://allrgb.com)

<comment><USER3> Yep, I posted this link downstream a little bit ago. The processes different people use are interesting.

What's fun is that we are so tuned to color differences that a slight change in the algorithm — what color it "resorts to" if the desired one is used — might produce a small absolute difference (distance-wise on the table) but a massive perceptual difference, or create a much greater effect far down the line when greens were exhausted early or unused bright reds are speckling a neutral zone. Certainly an interesting exercise!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm wondering how much of the visible color space is represented here. 100%? 80% 50%?

<comment><USER13> 35.9% - look up sRGB for more info.

(!00% of what a monitor can do, but 35.9% of what the human eye can see - especially greens are lacking.)

Have a look: [http://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/2illusion.html](http://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/2illusion.html)

<comment><USER14> I remember being in a computer vision class some years ago where the professor was explaining to us how RGB fails to capture a wide range of colors. I was annoyed that his presentation didn't show any examples of these other colors, and then I realized how I was an idiot.

<comment><USER15> If your school had invested in compatible projectors, he could have just installed the plugin:

[http://www.negativland.com/archives/015squant/plugin.html](http://www.negativland.com/archives/015squant/plugin.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Such an image is smaller than you might think. Uncompressed it's 50.33MB.

It's time to move to 48 bit images.

<comment><USER16> How well will it compress if every pixel in the image is used only once and is different?

<comment><USER17> Pretty well if it's a regular layout, depending on algorithm, since almost every successive pixel is different from the last by exactly one level in one channel.

<comment><USER18> Sounds like another fun bit of code golf if some of the more aggressive compression algorithms aren't already picking up on the bit level changes (I believe they do).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's this iOS app that generates very similar images, but with some interactivity. [https://itunes.apple.com/app/rgb- petri/id423126001?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/app/rgb- petri/id423126001?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm getting a 508 error...

But somewhat related, and I think was on HN at some point: [http://corte.si/%2Fposts/code/hilbert/portrait/index.html](http://corte.si/%2Fposts/code/hilbert/portrait/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> It's very interesting how our eyes and brain processes colors differently -- for example, I see a lot of green and blue, but less red (though this is probably due to having a mild case of Protanomaly I suppose).

<comment><USER22> You think the fact that you see less red is _probably_ due to having a genetic defect that results in poor red–green hue discrimination?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> the growth process is similar to something i hit upon a while ago, although i wasn't trying to present all possible colors:

[https://vimeo.com/699396](https://vimeo.com/699396)

implementing it was kind of my new language self challenge, so i ended up putting it in the appstore while learning objective-c:

[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rgb- petri/id423126001?mt=8&ls...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rgb- petri/id423126001?mt=8&ls=1)

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks the OP used Diffusion Limited Aggregation (DLA)?

</comment><comment><USER25> You might also like: [http://www.reddit.com/r/glitch_art](http://www.reddit.com/r/glitch_art)

</comment><comment><USER26> Man, that video was really cool! I wish the author had released the source code for this though, I'd love to know how this was made.

<comment><AUTHOR> The source code was posted here. [http://code.google.com/p/joco- tools/source/browse/RGBGenerat...](http://code.google.com/p/joco- tools/source/browse/RGBGenerator)

<comment><USER26> Oh, awesome, thank you for posting the link! I missed it because I didn't look past the "TODO"... Whoops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If we could make this as a square, could we not create transforms to perfectly replicate any filter e.g Instagram, as a map of colours?

</comment><comment><USER28> I was worried my head might explode with a colour overload, but in the end I was fine. Pretty cool though</comment>


Doctor uses household drill to save Australian boy - <AUTHOR> http://www.france24.com/en/20090520-doctor-uses-household-drill-save-australian-boy-0

<comment><USER2> "My God, man. Drilling holes in his head isn't the answer"</Bones></comment>


How to use interfaces in Go - <AUTHOR> http://orel.li/SxBSxe

<comment><USER2> First and foremost, thanks for this nice description of interfaces!

 _If you understand that an interface value is two words wide and it contains a pointer to the underlying data, that's typically enough to avoid common pitfalls._

Except for one: namely, if a variable _v_ that has an interface as its type and the value pointer is _nil_ and the type pointer isn't, then _v != nil_. In other words, if an interface value is internally represented as:

        {*Type, *Value}

Then:

        {&DogType, nil} != nil
        {nil, nil}      == nil

This can lead to results that are initially surprising. For a description and an example:

<http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#nil_error>

<comment><USER3> Someone posted this chart[0] on the mailing list[1].

It pretty-prints a chart that shows the different nil comparisons, and what they result in (true, false, or n/a being an error caught by the compiler).

[0]: <http://play.golang.org/p/7GohUdfIsD> [1]: [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang- nuts/zvqvEZk53Q0/di...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang- nuts/zvqvEZk53Q0/discussion)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought Go was supposed to be a clean language, but these seem pretty warty. My String[] really is substitutable for an interface{}[] within the context of a function that doesn't modify it, but there seems no way to express this. That error message when parsing a time is obscene. The way you register a JSON unmarshaller is very magic. And the subtlety about nil I see in a sibling comment seems very unfortunate. (I think I'd actually prefer sql-style "nil != nil everywhere" to "nil == nil only if they're of the same type")

<comment><USER2> _My String[] really is substitutable for an interface{}[] within the context of a function that doesn't modify it, but there seems no way to express this._

Not really. The underlying representation is different, an interface is a pointer to a type and a pointer to a value. A string is a pointer to the character data and a length.

It'd get even more difficult with other data types, since an interface is two machine words, and other data types can be anything. Since a slice is backed by an array, there would be no way to do reliable indexing.

I do see your point: a slice could hold the type of its elements and then you'd have to prove that no other types are stored in the slice. But that's not really simple either.

A more consistent solution would be to store 'interface values' as pointers (rather than a pair of pointers). Then you could use a slice of pointers as a slice of interface{} (or any other interface the pointed-to type supports).

<comment><USER5> > _I do see your point: a slice could hold the type of its elements and then > you'd have to prove that no other types are stored in the slice. But that's > not really simple either._

It's simple in typesafe languages that support generics/parametric polymorphism

<comment><USER2> _It's simple in typesafe languages that support generics/parametric polymorphism_

That's a different thing. The function is then instantiated to that particular type. []interface{} is more akin to an array of base class pointers. Except that in Go the type is stored with the pointer to the actual data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like TypeScript (Microsoft's typed layer on top of JavaScript) is also using this concept of interfaces as well. Classes implicitly implement interfaces.

<http://www.typescriptlang.org/Playground/#ex5>

</comment><comment><USER7> When GO introduces C like syntax and interfaces, people who hate Java and C++ (which has everything and more) jumps into the bandwagon. Interesting!

</comment><comment><USER8>
        func GetEntity(r *http.Request, v Entity) error {

Shouldn't v be a pointer here?

<comment><USER9> No but it has to be passed a pointer to a structure which implements Entity.</comment></comment>


Do a whois on cnn.com - <AUTHOR>

From the terminal, whois cnn.com and I get:
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.
CNN.COM.UNIMUNDI.COM CNN.COM.MORE.INFO.AT.WWW.BEYONDWHOIS.COM CNN.COM.IS.0WN3D.BY.GULLI.COM CNN.COM
what gives? Navigating to cnn.com in the browser still redirects to the correct site, but it seems their whois info is all funky. Can someone explain?? <comment><USER2> Formatting it:

        Whois Server Version 2.0

        Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
        with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
        for detailed information.

        CNN.COM.UNIMUNDI.COM
        CNN.COM.MORE.INFO.AT.WWW.BEYONDWHOIS.COM
        CNN.COM.IS.0WN3D.BY.GULLI.COM
        CNN.COM

        To single out one record, look it up with "xxx", where xxx is one of the
        of the records displayed above. If the records are the same, look them up
        with "=xxx" to receive a full display for each record.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since no one explained it, it is whois spam. You can find more info through searching, they are not hacked they are just popular sites so they attract the spam.

And if you don't want to google people just register name servers with xxx.com.xxxx.tld and their name server will show up when someone searches for xxx.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Does this have any relevance other than someone claiming they "hacked" a certain domain? I don't imagine it has relevance on SEO or anything else, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's nothing wrong. Skip below to see information domain CNN.COM. Compare with whois microsoft.com, for example.</comment>


CryptStreamPP: Encrypted, seekable, file streams for c++ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/benhj/cryptostreampp <comment><USER2> In summary, it supports a number of block ciphers (many of which are obsolete and insecure), uses the CTR mode of operation, PBKDF2, and no authentication.

Edit:

Also, I don't think it destroys the password from the memory after deriving the key, or the encryption key after closing the stream, neither does it try to lock the memory (where the sensitive data is located) from being swapped out.</comment>


Last statements of executed inmates in Texas 1982-present - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zmjones/deathpenalty

<comment><USER2> Holy shit. That is chilling. I wonder how many of them were innocent.</comment>


Ask HN: Do Coursera or Udacity certifications help for getting a job? - <AUTHOR> I am wondering how much do the Coursera or Udacity certifications help to get a job in tech.<p>Do these certifications really count in the CV ? <comment><USER2> any employer of worth would rather take a candidate that takes pride in their own self education and development rather than expecting the employer to foot the bill for career development. If a candidate can show they have learnt and can apply that knowledge, irrespective of how they gained that knowledge (whether it is a university degree, IT training or coursera) I personally try and do a coursera every few months to keep up with my own personal development program.

<comment><USER3> > any employer of worth would rather take a candidate that takes pride in > their own self education and development rather than expecting the employer > to foot the bill for career development.

well said, on top of it - you would be at the mercy of your immediate manager to approve the bills for career development - which honestly could take you ages considering the typical budget constraints at larger corporations. Its better to take your career development in your own hands and do it for your own sake rather than for getting jobs etc.

Good employers will eventually see the value of what you are doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They do in my case.

I've been interviewing junior fintech dev candidates in the South Florida area and I've found that the candidates that have Udemy, Udacity or Coursera certificates are a better fit for our start up and showed a lot more initiative at tasks than those who didn't.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was wondering this as well. I doubt they carry any weight to be honest.

If you want a program that will give you certifications, you may have a better chance of going with Udacity([https://www.udacity.com/](https://www.udacity.com/)) instead.

Hope this helps.</comment>


German economy minister says EU-US trade talks have failed - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/611ff828b5ed44d5ad56ab46e0781e52 <comment><USER2> Only slightly more informative: [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/03/what-is- tti...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/03/what-is-ttip- controversial-trade-deal-explained)

From this article:

>> One of the most controversial elements of the trade proposal is the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision. ISDS provisions have been included in many trade deals since the 1980s, to encourage overseas investment in poorer countries. It means private investors can ask a tribunal of international arbitrators to judge if a government has treated them unfairly – and can get compensation.

That seems like a really bad thing.

<comment><USER3> How do you propose to mediate trade disputes between companies and states without something like the ISDS?

Imagine this on say the US national level. Apple wants to sell its computers in Alaska, but Alaska has a domestic computing company that gets goverment subsidizes, creating unfair competition. In this case the federal government would step in.

There's an analogous issue with international trade agreements. National governments will enter into those agreements, but their courts are always going to be biased towards their local constituents, so in my example Apple couldn't hope for a fair result by suing in Alaskan courts.

So there needs to be some pan-national body to settle these sort of disputes without turning every little international company v.s. company or company v.s. government issue into a full-on diplomatic dispute between the respective governments involved.

The ISDS in the TTIP seems like such a facility. Why is it unreasonable? I'm not some TTIP proponent or corporate shill, I'm just genuinely curious about this, it just seems to me that a lot of comments on the Internet, including on HN, have knee-jerk negative reactions to every provision in the TTIP without thinking about the real issues those provisions might be solving.

<comment><USER4> >>...without turning every little international company v.s. company or company v.s. government issue into a full-on diplomatic dispute between the respective governments involved.

The thing is that "full-on diplomatic dispute" is the only fair way to settle that, because governments are chosen by people, so they are legal representatives of them. ISDS on the other hand is some shady institution without any democratic control, and probably sponsored by the very corporations they are supposed to judge.

If you put things in perspective you can see what this TTIP deal is all about: big international corporations like Apple or Google don't like the fact that governments can create laws that they are obliged to respect.

What corporations hate even more is every country having it's own set of laws to follow. So, the whole idea of TTIP is to strip governments (with possible exception of US government) of power over corporations.

<comment><USER3> I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding representative democracies. Nothing about them says the can't enter into an agreement to create a pan- national body to settle trade disputes, as opposed to escalating every incident to a diplomatic dispute.

If people don't like that they'll make in an election issue, and either it'll be re-negotiated after the next election or the nation will leave the trade agreement. That's the democratic process at work.

How is that a better option anyway? So now instead of some court that has to be seen to be fair to the entire trade block deciding things, you want to have n^2 potential dispute mechanisms in place between the n countries that are part of the agreement?

        > big international corporations [...] don't like the fact that
        > governments can create laws that they are obliged to respect.

Or you could look at this from the flip side of that argument, which is that it's detrimental to international trade if companies can't make international investments without being at risk to domastic political whimsy that runs counter to the spirit of the trade deal that was initially agreed upon.

<comment><USER5> > _I think you 're fundamentally misunderstanding representative democracies. > Nothing about them says the can't enter into an agreement to create a pan- > national body to settle trade disputes, as opposed to escalating every > incident to a diplomatic dispute. If people don't like that they'll make in > an election issue, and either it'll be re-negotiated after the next election > or the nation will leave the trade agreement. That's the democratic process > at work._

Quite. Is someone proposing that we do otherwise? If not, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

> _Or you could look at this from the flip side of that argument, which is > that it 's detrimental to international trade if companies can't make > international investments without being at risk to domastic political whimsy > that runs counter to the spirit of the trade deal that was initially agreed > upon._

I'm not sure why governments should be more concerned about promoting international trade than about protecting their citizens. See e.g. the fracking thing upthread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not the first time Gabriel has expressed anti-TTIP views ([https://www.rt.com/news/344785-ttip-germany-bad- deal/](https://www.rt.com/news/344785-ttip-germany-bad-deal/)).

However, Merkel for example is for the deal, so it's hard to say what the outcome will be. A lot of local politicians want to push the deal through, but talks have stalled and there is some opposition from the public as well.

Interesting to see the final outcome here. Hopefully the obviously bad can be stripped, while retaining any good.

<comment><USER7> > some opposition from the public

TTIP is highly unpopular in Germany. In recent polls, 70% had unfavorable views about the treaty.

I personally don't know anyone who isn't concerned about it. The concerns I've heard to far were about consumer protection and the investor-state-dispute thing.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but how many are willing to change their voting preferences or educate others about the dangers of TTIP? Many polls show people to be disgruntled by polticians, yet they keep electing the same people.

And surely it was 70% of the people who took the poll and were consequently made aware of TTIP?

I'm not saying there isn't opposition, most people I know are against it. But other people seem to not even know about it, or find it difficult to see why politicians would do something against their best interests.

<comment><USER8> I really dislike this argument. When I go to a polling booth, I don't get a list of issues where I could check my position on each one. What I get is one vote to select a person or party which across all issues I care about comes closest to a position I can (or have to) live with.

I've yet to be in situation where I would be in agreement on every important issue with choices on offer. There are always multiple issues on which I have to compromise which doesn't mean they are not important. Individually they may be even at the top of my list, but can cumulatively still lose to others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Gabriel accused Washington of being "angry" about the deal that the EU struck with Canada, known as CETA, because it contains elements the U.S. doesn't want to see in the TTIP._

What would those elements be?

<comment><USER10> Very light on investor protections and retains a lot of the EU regulations to be kept. In particular about food safety and similar things.

<comment><USER11> But why does it matter that these are not part of TTIP? If CETA is signed into law and includes those regulations, then US companies can just route their business with the EU through their Canadian branches and get the same benefits.

(Unless, of course, European parliaments discover some leftover spine in their bodies and vote against CETA.)

<comment><USER12> > but why does it matter that these are not part of TTIP? If CETA

The tinfoil hat summary is that the US is trying to push through its own policies worldwide, one dominated by lack of regulation, lack of work protection and lots of protection for investors and people with money.

If they would be able to strick similar deals worldwide, US companies would be able to move production to wherever it is cheap, and no workers right exist, while having the investors money covered in case the corrupt dictatorships screws them over.

Any new deal signed which mandates workers right, environmental protections, and doesn't put investor-money above human lives, is detrimental to this global power-grab effort.

<comment><USER13> > The tinfoil hat summary is that the US is trying to push through its own > policies worldwide

There is no tinfoil hat about that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Gabriel's comments contrast with those of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said > last month that TTIP was "absolutely in Europe's interest."

Just as the French will someday regret the day they elected both Sarkozy and Hollande, Germans will in time curse the day they elected Merkel.

</comment><comment><USER15> The reason why ISDS provisions are even discussed is that governments have become so overreaching in regulating economic activity that business owners today have the very real fear that they'll be put out of business because a government passes a law that will (sometimes even retroactively) force them to make gigantic payments.

ISDS provisions are in that sense a solution for a world where we expect that government power over the economy will likely increase even more in the future.

The solution that I prefer is to shrink government so it can't interfere anymore to a degree that turns good and successful investments retroactively into bad investments that cause investors to lose a lot of money and time.

</comment><comment><USER16> Good

The benefits were much smaller than the drawbacks

</comment><comment><USER17> In the past he had a different opinion about TTIP [0].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7Zb0XxSkxE&t=29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7Zb0XxSkxE&t=29)

</comment><comment><USER18> The UK is back of the queue but at least we're still in the queue !

<comment><USER19> The problem for the UK getting quick trade deal is to get good deals.

If it´s only trade deals that the UK wants they just have to accept the first draft of all the deals other government put on the table. Many countries will queue to sign for unrestricted access to the UK market, no string attached. The EU will be the first in line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> i guess its a case of the us not wanting to make any concessions. i think its ok though, america can keep its exceptionalism as we don't need ttip to flood the american market with cheap 'italian' shoes (they are likely products of macedonian or albanian sweatshop labour). we already have ft with canada apparantly and canada is in nafta, so they will pass through canada where they will be traded with the us under nafta free trade regime.

<comment><USER21> That's great for Europe as they can access the US market however it means the US cannot access the European market. I am sure that selling your products abroad is much more preferable to importing goods.

<comment><USER3> So the US can't access the EU through:

       US -> Canada -> EU

But somehow the EU can access the US through:

       EU -> Canada -> US

What part af that path doesn't involve a bidirectional free trade agreement that would make it just as easy for the US to access the EU via Canada as the other way around?

<comment><USER22> the assumption is that the EU-Canada agreement puts more restrictions on products so that everything which is allowed on the second path goes through all of it, but the opposite is not true.

(AFAIK this isn't generally true outside of agro/food but that is a large part of potential US->EU exports being erased while "Italian shoes" and "french wine" still get through in the other direction)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The US should concede nothing. Indeed if I were negotiating for the US, I would exploit the current weaknesses in the EU to impose a deal that makes clear Europe's decline.</comment>


Are Celebrity Endorsements Still Effecitve? - <AUTHOR> https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/1842/do-celebrity-endorsements-actually-sell-more-produ.html <comment><USER2> This article does not commit to an answer - it's essentially a "cold read" response. No hard information like "celebrity endorsements used to work, see XYZ", either.</comment>


Scientists reverse damage of Alzheimer's disease in human brain cells (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.drugdevelopment-technology.com/news/scientists-reverse-damage-alzheimers-disease-human-brain-cells/ <comment><USER2> > Neurons were created using skin cells donated by Alzheimer's patients

It's amazing this is even possible

<comment><USER3> Reasonably easy, given current state of stem cell research.

Having neurons is different from having a useful neural connection though, or part of brain...</comment></comment>


In the Vaccine-Autism Debate, What Can Parents Believe? - Jenny McCarthy - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenny-mccarthy/vaccine-autism-debate_b_806857.html

<comment><USER2> In this article Jenny McCarthy defends the British scientist whose fraudulent anti-vaccine article killed or sickened countless children. The mind reels.</comment>


Carbon nanofibres made from CO2 in the air - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33998697

<comment><USER2> There are some symbiotic relationships between ocean water desalination and molten salt electrolysis and photo-voltaic electricity collection.

Create

      * salt (hopefully of the same kind required for the process described in the article),
      * clean water,
      * carbon fibers (which can be used to create batteries to store surplus energy from solar during peak solar hours), and
      * remove carbon from the air (while creating pure oxygen gas)</comment>


Hire Me GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://hiremegithub.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote about just how much this scared the crap out of me too: [https://scott- williams.squarespace.com/words/2013/5/14/fear-...](https://scott- williams.squarespace.com/words/2013/5/14/fear-of-falling-fear-of-failing-fear- of-rejection)

<comment><USER2> This is good stuff. Should be worthy of an interview at least.

 _I prefer Macs, Vim, Nikon Cameras, and Dark Beer._

I don't know anything about cameras, but the other three are dead on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd way rather hire someone like this than someone who has their resume sent by a recruiter.

One thing Scott; "it's how stuff just get's better" should be "gets better."

Good luck!

<comment><USER4> Just like he said. Iteration. It's how stuff gets better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love these cover letter type pages, and this is a particularly nice one.

I just made a similar switch from a job and it's been wonderful so far.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> A .Net developer who prefers Macs and Vim seems hard to swallow. You do have great sites, so good luck.

</comment><comment><USER7> Some time ago, a similar move ended successfully for Microsoft.

All the best!

</comment><comment><USER8> Good luck! Can I ask why there's no link to your Github profile on the page?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's there, where I mention that I've been following them since their inception. Yataa is also linked to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see a cow. It's purple.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do you read news? - <AUTHOR> What drives you to check the news, read an article, watch a video, or however else you consume news?  What do you get out of it?  Does it vary based on what kind of news it is?  (i.e. business news vs. political vs. tech blog?) <comment><USER2> I read to remain an informed voter, and an informed investor. Don't care about the Kardashians enough to even look up how to spell their name. Don't care about popular sports (though I won't disparage those that like their "sportsball"). Nope, in my increasingly old age I care about which asshole needs to be voted out of office next time, and how can I make more money through capital investments. The rest is trivial noise, and perhaps even written to manipulate me.

That's not to say I don't enjoy a naughty little look at the occasional personal interest story. Oh, okay, I'll just take a quick sneak and see who Tom Cruise is sleeping with. But the vast, vast majority of the time the front page of, say, the NYT will suffice.

<comment><USER3> > though I won't disparage those that like their "sportsball"

...but you just did though? Your entire response is pretty disparaging and patronizing of anyone who cares about different things from you.

<comment><USER2> If that's your take-away from my comment, I do wonder how you make it through a workday, being so ready to take offense, without bursting into tears.

For the record, at worst I was shooting for irony, not offense.

<comment><USER3> > without bursting into tears

Yeah see, this is what I'm talking about. You're being very rude, condescending, and generally insufferable. It's possible to make your point without insulting people. For example, things that you don't care about aren't automatically "trivial noise".

<comment><USER4> Not the parent, but do we have to start every sentence with "IMHO"? To me it was clear that they were stating their opinion, not trying to establish a standard for what one should care about.

<comment><USER3> It's less about it being an opinion and more about being respectful when sharing it. Obviously it's fine not to care about sports or reality shows (I don't either!), but he went out of his way to basically make fun of those who do. In fact, he didn't have to mention others at all! His entire comment could have been summed up as "I read news to make financial and political decisions." No need to brag about how much you don't care about celebrities or sports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Addiction. I grew up reading newspapers in the morning, which was my gateway drug to bitesize information. When the first feed readers appeared, in the late '90s, there was no going back.

Information is a hell of a drug.

<comment><AUTHOR> to continue with your analogy -- what are your withdrawal symptoms? is there a FOMO built in?

<comment><USER5> I feel slightly nervous the first day or two when I go on holiday in places where I have to disconnect. After that, it's fine. As soon as I manage to get hold of a phone or newspaper i can read, though, it's back in the tunnel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Check the news for any tech security issues and any new hot services or software I dont know about.

Politics is just for kicks, because I know most of it is filtered and slanted by its organization. Seems it takes a day or 2 before we get the real truth to anything. The facts are normally too skewed and biased on release.

<comment><USER7> > Politics is just for kicks, because I know most of it is filtered and > slanted by its organization. Seems it takes a day or 2 before we get the > real truth to anything. The facts are normally too skewed and biased on > release.

I'm totally agree with you. Most of the actual news articles are looking to create some "buzz". I rather prefer waiting few days and read complete article well structured that exposes the facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Like Chris Sacca said a while back, news feeds should be a push and not a pull. Also, majority of the people read news in order to kill time, which is counter intuitive. I would think people would read news mostly to stay informed with what's going on in the world. So to answer your question(s):

\- Why people read news? based on current data (do a quick google search) it seems that people need to kill time.

\- Why would I read a specific article? Same as previous statement as well as personal interests in the moment

\- Why would I watch a video? In my case I watch more videos than your average person because I hate reading. It's just not efficient enough. So I'd most likely consume video news rather than articles. Why would I click on a specific video? This goes back to the 2 previous points...

<comment><AUTHOR> I think what I'm asking is a little deeper. It's a question I'm wrestling with because I do it too -- I consider myself a news junkie. But WHY do we want to be informed? What good is it to know whats happening? Especially if its something happening far away to people I dont know -- I _AM_ interested, but it doesnt make rational sense to me.

I think it is a little more complicated than just wasting time. You can waste time in lots of ways -- so there has to be SOME draw to news.

<comment><USER9> I think it has to do with the sense of participation in _imagined communities_ ([https://people.ucalgary.ca/~bakardji/community/imagined_comm...](https://people.ucalgary.ca/~bakardji/community/imagined_communities.html)). That's kind of why I read the news from my home country even though I don't live there anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Personally, consuming news is a source of entertainment and a topic for small- talk.

If you interface with clients or coworkers on a daily basis, "small-talk" improves relationships among your peers. Not to mention, you seem more personable and likeable - traits that are revered in the modern workplace.

This isn't a blanket endorsement to start talking politics in the workplace, I'm simply saying that being well-versed in current events has value.

<comment><USER11> You don't even need to be well-versed. If you just read the headlines you can ask people to fill you in. Some people just love to tell you what they know ;)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To summarize some of the answers here:

\- Direct personal gain -- i.e. information for political engagement, investing...

\- Fear of missing out

\- To be able to participate in conversations with others

\- Lack of something better to do.

Anything else?

</comment><comment><USER12> It's a bad habit, I really should stop because I gain nothing from it.

<comment><USER13> Sometimes I'll go the whole week without news by accident, and then wonder why I'm feeling "so positive and energized recently"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I read news, sparingly and often not to intensely, simply because everyone else does and social interaction is required to survive in society.

Some people react to current news, or let it affect their judgement, and it helps me sometimes predict or understand people's behavior. This is especially true of local or political news. It's always good to keep an ear on the grapevine even if most of it is garbage simply to know where many people's mind will be.

Other people like to talk about news, bringing it up for small talk, and therefore having some semblance of knowledge of current headlines lets me feel and give the impression of not being an outcast.

Oftentimes for me, if a headline catches my interest, I'll read the story, and then try to find out what really happened myself. This is rare.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why am I reading these comments? ^_^

</comment><comment><USER16> Cause it's socially acceptable to read bews multiple times a day in my browser tab as a form of mental rest from programming rather than getting up and walking around the office building every 45 minutes

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't understand people who don't read the news. Do they also not vote, as they cannot form their own political opinion? In reality they probably do, but are susceptible to populism, be it right-wing, left-wing, green or what else. Or they take on their parents' or friends' political views.

Sometimes party programs sound just great. "More of this, more of that, less of the bad stuff". I want to be able to cut through the bullshit and make decisions based on my knowledge of the world. And I'm curious about it, anyways! That's why I read the news.

Everyone should read a prestigious newspaper. But especially educated people who hold higher positions with more responsibility, whose actions have a higher impact than those of the average citizen, should stay well-informed.

</comment><comment><USER18> Fear of missing out on something interesting or worth knowing ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you consider interesting/worth knowing -- and why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Boredom at work

</comment><comment><USER20> Fear and greed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Serious question -- but like looking for an edge in investments/business?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I use rss to read the news</comment>


SpaceX Isn't Planning to Reuse the Falcon 9 Rocket's second stage - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-17/musk-spacex-not-planning-to-reuse-falcon-9-aims-to-speed-bfr <comment><USER2> I think this is just confirmation of something that's been true for a while. Stage 2 reusability went from "we're working on it" to "yeah, that's interesting, we'll take a look at it when we have time".

I think they were a little burned by the Falcon Heavy we well. It's an awesome rocket, but it'll take a while for them to even break even on its R&D, as it looks like it won't ever fly more than 2 times per year and then it'll be quickly supplanted by the BFR.

And so, while we won't see a reusable Falcon Stage 2, we will see some kind of weird test hybrid / mini BFS build around the falcon stage 2. I imagine it's just a Stage 2 with the shape and control surfaces of BFS to test their re- entry procedures.

[https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-modify-falcon-9-upper- stage-...](https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-modify-falcon-9-upper-stage-to- test-bfr-technologies/)

<comment><USER3> I read somewhere that the Falcon Heavy will find a new niche in direct-to- Geosynchronous launches. Currently, most launches take you to a transfer orbit, then you have to use your satellite's fuel to position yourself in synchronous orbit, a maneuver that can take months. The Falcon Heavy skips the second step and you save your satellite's fuel. Can't seem to find the article at the moment though.

<comment><USER4> 1\. It only takes months if your satellite uses only ion engines. If it has regular hypergolic propellant engines it only takes hours.

2\. ULA's (Lockheed Martin and Boeing) Atlas V and Delta IV can make direct- to-GEO insertion, and basically only the DoD wants that. SpaceX plans to use FH to get DoD contracts, but it's not a very large market. It used to be very lucrative for ULA, but SpaceX will lower prices so it won't be as lucrative for them.

<comment><USER5> Months going to GEO are months of revenue lost, and mass for propellant is less mass for payload. That's the tradeoffs that may not be compelling for some customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It makes sense. If BFR works, it will make all the rockets obsolete, by simply being fully reusable. Hence the only sensible thing to do is to concentrate 100% of the efforts on it.

<comment><USER7> What all is different about the BFR heat shield compared to the shuttle? I assume there is much newer tech since the 70s, is it easier to refurbish?

<comment><USER6> The shuttle didn't do any re-entry engine burns. It fully relied on the friction.

<comment><USER8> It's not really friction that's slows stuff on reentry. The heat is from compressing the air. Which is why the heat spikes away from the vehicle.

Anyway, the rocket equation means if you wanted to slow down before reentry you would effectively need to accelerate to twice the final speed 0 to X then X to 0. That's simply not going to happen.

<comment><USER9> It takes much, much less energy to slow down a nearly-empty shell than one that was full of fuel and oxidizer.

<comment><USER10> You have to take the slowing-down fuel with you on the speeding-up part of the trip though, which means it takes much more energy to speed up in the first place.

<comment><USER11> Yes. SpaceX surely knows this, and reckons that the cost is worth full reusability with reduced refurbishment cost.

<comment><USER8> No, they are using a heat shield which is unnecessary if you slow down before reentry.

What confuses people is you need to bleed off a little energy to start decent, and another tiny amount to land. But, between those points 99% of the energy is bleed off via air.

<comment><USER10> You can compare the weight of the heat shield required for atmospheric reentry braking to the weight of the fuel you need for propulsive reentry braking: if the fuel weighs more, use the heat shield instead. This could be the difference, for example, between 100t of fuel versus 15t of heatshield.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not directly related to the topic, but I wonder if there's a way to at least partially recover energy, spent on lifting stuff to the orbit, from kinetic energy rockets have on reentry.

This question also applies to the heat generated from atmospheric friction during liftoff and landing. And also to payloads.

<comment><USER13> When I want those kinds of perspectives, I usually check out the 'Isaac Arthur' channel [0].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g/videos)

Guessing as my uninformed self, I suspect we could recover energy by building a tower that acts as the opposite of a rail cannon. If the craft is emitting a magnetic field as it descends, it could create an electric current in the tower. Of course, it would need to nearly touch the tower or emit a very strong magnetic field, so the conditions probably contrive against this scenario.

<edit adds succeeding> Or, descend through a tower and let the escaping air drive a turbine.

I think the problem is that the energy has high intensity and low duration. It would be similar to asking if we can get _some_ residential power with a military grenade.

<comment><USER14> I've seen a suggestion that magnetic breaking of the form you suggest is a better way to generate power from mining the moon than He3 — difference in gravitational potential and extremely low concentrations of the latter in the lunar surface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's the status of their efforts to recover and recycle the payload fairing? I remember reading that they expected to save $1M or more per launch by doing that.

<comment><USER4> No success yet. They are going to move the fairing catching boat "Mr Steven" from the west coast to the east coast to then try again. And the fairing is ~$6M so they can save ~$5M per launch if it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have no information other than the timing but it seems like that spate of firing he did enabled both the starlink redesign and the focus switch to bfr.

<comment><USER17> Were there firings at more than the Starlink office?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Finding Rover, facial recognition for finding lost dogs - <AUTHOR> http://findingrover.com

<comment><USER2> This is an awesome idea! Will you expand to cats?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, soon! Android too!</comment></comment>


Save me from myself - <AUTHOR>

Hackers, I need your help.  I've become addicted to a silly flash game (http://elementsthegame.com), and I need a way to make it impossible for me to play it while I'm at work.  Difficulty: my work machine is running Fedora 11. <comment><USER2> echo "I am WASTING my work day!" | elm -s "Wasting My Day!" your_boss@your_work.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Who should I email if I don't have a boss?

<comment><USER2> echo "I dont love you!" | elm -s "I dont LOVE you!" your_significant_other@your_domain.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> sudo sh -c "echo 127.0.0.1 elementsthegame.com >>/etc/hosts"

<comment><USER3> If your browser supports GreaseMonkey, I've also had good results with Stealth Kiwi (more flexible than the /etc/hosts solution): <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8616>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> unplug your work machine

</comment><comment><USER5> When I absolutely need to get a piece of code or documentation done right now, I disconnect my computer from the Internet.

It is a lot easier to activate hack-mode if you aren't updating your IM status, checking twitter, checking proggit, checking HN, checking email, etc.

Once I'm in hack-mode, however, it doesn't really matter if I'm are connected to the Internet (or if a bomb went off, for that matter).

I think, however, that getting addicted to a silly flash game might be more of a symptom than the root cause (lack of motivation).

For more motivation, I might get started writing a piece of code that is interesting to me (to warm up), then transition from it into the code that I actually have to write.

Another thing to look at is physiological causes, make sure you have proper blood sugar level (I'm personally a chronic "I forgot to eat, again..." type of person, and that really hurts your ability to do anything).

Also, exercising regularly will increase the amount of energy that you have during the day. When you have energy, you feel like getting stuff done.</comment>


How Pixar Lost Its Way - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/how-pixar-lost-its-way/524484/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I think the article is trying to get at the question of how long magic can last. Magic comes from a perfect formula but eventually that formula grows weak and ineffective. Often companies will try and throw money at the formula hoping to keep it working without realizing that people have built up a tolerance to it. Instead thy have to invest in another bold recipe. That can be risky but effective. Look at Microsoft.</comment>