You've heard of "yes men". Now learn about "no men" (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/10/25/no/ <comment><USER3> I definitely felt this decades ago when I started in the industry.

It's 2019 now though. only 8 years later, but a lot of things changed.

The industry is growing fast, faster than knowledge can be shared even with all the power of the internet. It's very bottom up, with newer engineers severely outnumbering those that have been around. People are making fat salaries and companies are catering to their whims. They/we're more spoiled than they've ever been. People go to work hoping they'll be find a reason today to try the latest pattern they saw on Twitter or try the trendy new tech or library their friend just talked about.

If you don't have people saying no, it quickly (very quickly) get out of control. As organizations grow, you need to start saying no. A lot. Else within 0.2 seconds of the new intern joining or the new grad coming in, or the lateral hire who was the king of their 5 people startup will be pushing some stuff that isn't mature enough or doesn't follow established patterns. More often, they'll be reintroducing something problematic that you just finished getting rid of 6 months ago.

It sucks. Sure, there are some power hungry people who get off on power trip by being gate keepers. But overall, it's just people desperately trying to keep things in one piece and the company going, and that means making hard decisions and enforcing them. It just doesn't feel good to say no, arguing all day with people who have way more energy than you do, but it has to be done.

<comment><USER4> That is why you write that in a standards document, along with the reasons why and have a consensus about it. That way it becomes impersonal.

Same thing with auto formatters and linters sidestepping a lot of pointless bickering and bike shedding.

<comment><USER3> That works for things you want to DO, but is hard for things you DON'T want to do.

As I mentioned in another post, as your org grows, there's going to be an infinite amount of things people push, and pushing back is hard. If you have to stop and write a consensus document for every single one, you'll be doing nothing else.

<comment><USER5> How hard is it to say "these are the types of things we want to do. anything must look like these types of things in terms of (insert x y and z criteria: size, scale, opportunity, profitability, growth, etc)

spoiler alert: it isn't hard and this is what we do at my startup that is currently experiencing hyper growth and is on multiple "unicorn" lists

<comment><USER3> I can't even tell if it's satire. But if it's not: I haven't see it be done easily over several hundred engineers. If you have that kind of charisma, hat off to you!

<comment><USER5> Charisma is certainly something I have never been told I lack. Maybe we are lucky and have the right people as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A powerful "no man" can be a valuable asset sometimes.

I was involved in the design of an ASIC. This was going to be used by people from all different areas of the company, and they all had various demands. Most had never worked on a chip before, and didn't realize the cost of what they were asking for. The easy thing to do would have been to ensure that every requested feature was added But that would have burned area, power, and huge amounts of design and verification time.

Luckily we had a senior guy who had the clout to say "no". Over and over again, he would tell people how much things would cost in terms of money and time, and ask if the features they wanted were worth that much. Or he'd point out that what they wanted could be done with firmware plus existing features. Overall, he probably saved millions of dollars and caused the project to be delivered on time.

<comment><USER7> I have an unofficial board of advisors for my small company, and one of them is a "No Man". I knew that when I asked him to join. Every time the company has an idea, this guy will shut it down immediately. He forces us to defend every single decision.

Do we always listen to him? No. Does he always win? No. Is he always right? Absolutely not. But I keep him around because he forces everyone in the company to defend every idea. If you still feel good about the idea after defending it from him, then go ahead. If you've lost faith, then I'm glad we didn't waste any time on it.

<comment><USER8> Every company really, really, really....really needs someone like that.

Imagine how much better the Star Wars prequels could have been if only Lucasfilm had a strong No Person to stop them from doing stupid shit.

<comment><USER9> George Lucas' ex-wife was the no-woman on the original trilogy. She was his editor!

<comment><USER10> He needs to remarry her.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get it.

1 - there is a Mr.No guy but, the author only knows him by reputation

2 - there is a technical problem that seems to revolve around memory

3 - the author has an idea of a solution, she actually tries as people don't believe her

4 - her solution works, but she is told the "No" guy said "no swap" once a long time ago

Her reaction: "Did I care what he supposedly said? No."

Why doesn't she go talk to him ? The "No" guy could have had another solution than raising swap. He could have recognized being wrong, allow swap and learn from it. He could continue say "No" but now the author has an actual experience of it, and not just hearsay and reputation.

It seems like nobody communicates correctly in that company, the author included, and it must hurt in so many places.

Edit: fixed author's gender, thanks

<comment><USER12> > It seems like nobody communicates correctly in that company, the author > included, and it must hurt in so many places.

Depending on what you think of Google (or maybe Rackspace, but I think Google's more likely the source of that post), you might be surprised at what company you're talking about.

I think you're spot on but am curious if you'd write that if you knew where they worked.

<comment><USER13> Rachel's at Facebook

<comment><USER14> She left Facebook early this year, IIRC.

<comment><USER15> Early 2018

<comment><USER14> It probably was late 2018 then. I don't know the specific dates because I don't work there anymore. All I remember is that I left a couple of months after her (uncorrelated with her leaving) and I left early this year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've found there's something even worse: Policies that aren't actually attached to any known person.

At least with the swap example, there was someone you could talk to, or ask your manager to talk to. But what if it was just an Onion in the Varnish and nobody remembered who said no swap in prod, it was just "That's the [company name] Way"?

<comment><USER17> Happened at my company, where we had some policy in response to an incident, put into place by a couple of senior leaders... the policy was overly broad, but kinda made sense for the problem.

After a while, those two leaders left, and we started seeing issues that the policy was causing. However, people still stuck to the policy. When I would argue that the policy wasn't really accomplishing what it was originally intended to do anymore, I was repeatedly told it didn't matter, it was the policy. There was no one to even argue against anymore, because they were gone, but the policy remained.

<comment><USER18> It is super important that policies are mutable, that they can change with changes in circumstances and knowledge. They should be as easy to change as the org chart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I know exactly who she's talking about! When I was at the unnamed company I worked on a project that he retained control over and said no to a lot. We found that if we sent him a very well reasoned, documented and measured change he'd say yes.

I was there when the no swap policy was under lots of active discussion. It was there to ensure that application authors could have strong expectations on how long a memory access would take. Imagine trying to provide evidence that removing the "no swap" policy wouldn't affect any of the applications that were running across a very large infrastructure.

Her point really resounds though, this person was referred to all the time in conversation, "well, we probably couldn't get this past X". He was mythical. In general that was often a good thing. Making changes that could have such a broad impact should be well reasoned. But it's also quite annoying, having a nagging voice inside your head that just says "no", seemingly disconnected from the actual source.

<comment><USER20> What the app something that required deterministic latency? There are situations where your rather hit OOM and kill your app and go buy some RAM rather than have it operate slowly - executing trades too late, or pointing at targets that have moved, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'll take a stab at explaining what happened here:

"No swap in production" probably stemmed from someone who worked on the servers, and that person discovered they were swapping too much, which would eventually lead to hard drive decay. And, maybe for budget reasons or whatever, they decided to make it a policy to disable swap, rather than increase RAM or change the underlying software that caused the servers to use too much RAM.

And now, later, on different servers with different software and different specs, the policy still exists, because nobody really paid much attention to why it was created in the first place.

<comment><USER22> Swap causes not disk decay but performance decay; the system gets unamanageably slow and would have been better off with a clean crash and failover.

<comment><USER23> Only if there's thrashing. It's prohibitively more expensive to build a machine that has enough memory for way more than peak usage than to have some swap that can handle some level of overflow pages.

Like everything swap has to be monitored and there's no need To disable it entirely

<comment><USER20> It depends. Sudden peaks of latency can get comparatively more expensive on a trading floor than buying an absurd amount of RAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This seems far less about "just say no" than it is about not understanding, or insisting on, long-obsoleted policies.

I've encountered something of a converse of this situation: a set of prod servers running a Java workload on which performance was frequently abysmal, which turned out to be due to a very poorly tuned set of JVM GC parameters. The feature(s) were poorly documented (lots of detail, little useful guidance), so it took some tuning and ongoing performance monitoring to see that 1) the problem had been solved and 2) that no new problems were introduced.

The latter being of particular concern as this was a long-lived project that had gone through generations of development and ops support (I was latter), few of whom were on current speaking terms with the shop in question.

The management feedback I got on my monitoring was (a rudimentary bit of instrumentation, and periodic checking) was that this seemed to reflect an excess of concern and/or attachment to the issue and/or solution.

Given the numerous other years-outstanding issues which I'd identified and (eventually) largely remedied, I found this response tremendously perplexing.

</comment><comment><USER25> Isn't no swap in prod fairly standard? Kubernetes pre-flight checks check it, for example.

If enabling swap 'fixes' it, isn't the proper fix to provision more memory?

<comment><USER26> > If enabling swap 'fixes' it, isn't the proper fix to provision more memory?

Mr. No says all servers must match one of the existing configurations, none of which have very much ram.

If you're on the border where a little bit of swap gets you zero pages, and no swap gets you stuck machines, you probably need to figure out how to scale within your constraints, but a little bit of swap should be ok, in the neighborhood of 1GB gives you a little bit of breathing room without prolonging the inevitable for very long.

<comment><USER25> 1\. The article states that the older machines had swap enabled, so they weren't homogenous anyway;

2\. At some point you do have to change configuration, and if you have insufficient memory on one you either have insufficient memory on all machines, or a badly distributed workload.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't think this is necessarily about people who are critical, it's that you can have someone who is just as stupid as a "yes man": they just say "no" just because instead of, you know, actually thinking.

I don't believe this "no man" is someone who is managing their attention or saying no for an actual reason. They're just contrary. And yeah, there's a lot of them around.

What I actually find even more frequently are "parrots". These are people who "learn by runbook". Instead of asking why something is done a particular way, they want to learn how to parrot some procedure. It's another variation of things: instead of saying "yes", or "no", they just parrot "process X".

I think this is really where the "no swap in production" example came from. I've seen _lots_ of stupid similar ideas in software development.

</comment><comment><USER28> There are any number of these type of people at any large organization, and I often flip flop on their usefulness.

Usually, they are in the form of protectors of the "process". This wasn't vetted by so and so, or didn't go through the proper channels, or doesn't use the right technology. And 51/100 times, they may be right - they keep unnecessary scope creep, bad ideas, technical debt, overhead out of the process. Literally the only reason people bother following a process is because of them.

But at the same time they are a huge drain on time and resources, and can enable bad or inefficient processes by manually keeping things in line. They add nothing to innovation - and it's a huge bummer to work with/around them.

<comment><USER29> As one of the dreaded "process enforcers" at my company, it's a tough line to walk. Any organization with more than a handful of people needs some written and agreed upon process or it's just chaos. But you can't just blindly follow a process for its own sake. You need to be able to articulate why we follow it with examples from the past of what happens without it. And, you need to be willing to constantly look for ways to improve it. Anything I can do to automate processes or simplify them makes the developers happier and more productive and me less of the bad guy. An inefficient process where people are always waiting on something to happen is demotivating to everyone.

Most process is scar tissue from something that went wrong in the past. We have mandatory code reviews because when we didn't we let a severe security bug get deployed to production. We have legal review all changes to the terms of service so we don't get successfully sued over it again. We have a schedule with code freeze N weeks before release because when we didn't we could never release anything because...just...one...more...change.

I was hired at a small company once without any process for anything. No release process or schedule. No bug tracker. No testing plan. No code reviews. Nobody used source control. Builds from different workstations produced wildly different binaries. It was a total madhouse and it was amazing that anything got done at all. The CEO simply thought the engineers just weren't competent enough, but they were--it was just a circus because nobody stepped up to formalize anything. Once we got a bug tracker and SVN set up, things turned around pretty quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This doesn't have much to do with saying "no" and everything to do with not understanding the fundamentals of a policy. If they guy who said "no swap" had a reason, then you could have discussed and potentially changed the policy.

</comment><comment><USER31> You ran with swap on because you saw a bunch of other machines with swap on and decided the policy was invalid. Thanks for making real security jobs hell, this is the #1 developer excuse for avoiding security requirements.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow, I had multiple very similar experiences with the same person she's talking about.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm a bit of a "no man", and at a company I worked at in the past my (pseudo- technical) manager told me to spend hours creating some sort of extremely purpose-specific test environment to aid in resolving a ticket that would only take me 30 minutes to resolve directly - so I just resolved the ticket instead and closed it, and got on with the rest of my work.

Eventually I was dismissed from this company a couple of days later and this situation was raised as one of the points. I was told "you can't refuse a mission given to you by your manager, regardless of the circumstances, that's ridiculous" and when I replied "I have different views to you on this" it was considered to be rude. The person who dismissed me is more or less the management boxing bag - a certified "yes man" who nobody respected.

Of course this hasn't changed my attitude, though. Still a proud "no man" and wouldn't go with the flow unless I'm sure everyone completely understands the consequences. At some point people have to realise that their loyalties don't go towards their manager and instead should go towards the shareholders and clients. There is a bit of give on this, of course, but eventually you have to do the right thing by the people that actually stand to gain and lose - <USER2> just being another cog in the machine that exists only to support other cogs in that machine.

<comment><USER34> Sounds like a toxic place. Instead of compromising or arguing a technical point and making the discussion an engineer effort, your manager ruled by feudal law. This is the antithesis of good engineer, in which good technical arguments and trade offs are made with everyone equal at the table.

Why your manager is making technical decisions is beyond me as well. Managers are supposed to be managing people, not doing engineering work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The funny thing is we're all making trade-offs at various times. So there will be people who will point at someone else and say "He's a no-man" and at other points they will be the "no-man". I remember saying "no" a lot at some points of my life, and I think it was because I hadn't yet learned to say "the cost of that is this and in my opinion it isn't worth it" but there are still times I am speaking to people where they are unable to truly grok the cost given my current skill of explaining and then it probably looks like I'm a no-man.

Besides, come on, who even has dogmatic rules like "No Swap In Production". That's just short-hand for a concept. When it's in dispute you have to trace the reasoning again. There's no alternative. I cannot imagine doing something only because someone said so. I certainly recall a time when someone said "Person X isn't going to like this" and saying "Well, then, person X is going to have to find another way to solve your problem". I certainly hope that if I'm person X in someone else's story, they take the same approach.

And if you have to trace the reasoning more than once, it's probably worth writing down your argument. Not as a big RFC-style thing necessarily, but even just a Slack thread you can point to.

<comment><USER36> Have Slack threads risen to the level of documentation now?

<comment><USER35> A principle I have is that I lower the barrier for others to contribute the things I want to see more of. Rather than holding a Slack thread up as the apotheosis of documentation, I recognize that I am more likely to receive wisdom if I allow for a Slack thread to be sufficient. It's just a permanent link to a conversation.

This is reinforced by the additional fact that the people with the most I have to learn from are the people with the least time to teach me. So I minimize the effort I require of them to give me their best.

For instance, if I had a chance to ask Feynman stuff, I would happily accept answers in txtspeak with emojis and broken grammar. Sort of a personal Postel principle.

<comment><USER37> I'm a big believer in apply postel is interpersonal communications. Particularly in the emotional realm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> One of the easiest strategies to protect your reputation in life and business is to never venture to say yes (because if it fails you are on the hook), and to let your discussion always revolve around an idea's failings, never its strengths. It gives an appearance of expertise and command, but risks little, and thus often leads to promotion. But I personally find it poisonous to the enterprise's progress: Even the best plans have weaknesses.

<comment><USER39> Er. This is awful advice.

You're also on the hook for impeding the organisation.

I'm a "no" guy. My boss is a pure yes man.

I don't say no to impede progress. I say no to avoid overworking my team which would reduce the quality of our work.

I say no, because it changes the scope of work in progress, and that requires sufficient justification because it means either throwing work away (which is both demoralising and wasteful), potentially increasing time to delivery or creates technical debt in droves.

I say "no" so that people don't make their own standards (like not following logging patterns, or metric naming conventions) which would cause all kinds of gunk in the infrastructure.

It's not about following a strict process. Although that can be important for streamlining workflow through an understaffed team like mine, it's about ensuring that the quality of what we do is not at risk.

Quality is our only currency, without it everything suffers.

<comment><USER38> What you say is true, which makes the topic so very subtle because it depends on the context. Saying no to protect your people/process is a good thing. Saying no because it is personally profitable to be disdainful of other's ideas while offering up none of your own, irrespective of what is good for the organization or your team, is not.

If one needs a mental picture, think of the quintessential hipster:

[https://sabotagetimes.com/life/hipster-irony-is- destroying-o...](https://sabotagetimes.com/life/hipster-irony-is-destroying- our-idea-of-sincerity-and-creativity)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Honestly saying no is one of the most important things either a startup or large company can have. Saying no gracefully, respectfully, and having the receiving person understand the rational is the hard part. This is one of the function of "fellows", "Senior Members of the Technical Staff", "Principal Architects" or whatever your org calls it and the people selected for that should be excellent at it. I guess the problem the author points out is that is the only thing a person might do and that is not good. Folks in this position should also know how to say yes and build buyin from business people/exec/program management.

Most organizations fail horribly at saying no. Instead they try to silo things to cope. This works to some extent, and you will always have silos as a company grows up, but you really should never end up with 12 programming languages, 5 RDBMS, 4 NoSQL DBs, 3 Javascript frameworks, 3 CIs, 3 cluster schedulers and then all the aforementioned also duplexed across organization units. That level of sprawl reduces margins, increases onboarding time, stresses even the most experienced staff, and makes adaption and business decision making murky at best.

</comment><comment><USER41> I agree with the author's overall premise, which is that other people who don't own and who are not responsible for your system should not have authority over how you build and operate it. One of the things that I like about the current company where I work is that owners always have the final say about their systems, not any external technical authority. There is no such authority who could say no where I work (with rare and limited exceptions), and I'm glad for that; service owners make the judgment call about trade-offs.

> "so-and-so says no swap in production".

That said, while I understand the point of the article is something different, I broadly agree with this advice: generally no swap in production.

If you need swap, then that's _probably_ a sign that the workload isn't matched well to the resources of the machine (unless the workload was specifically designed to employ swap, which most are not).

The problem is that: maybe most of the time the application's working set will fit within memory, and so it will perform well, but some of the time it will begin to swap and performance will degrade. The result of adding swap to a system is non-deterministic performance.

If you're building high-availability, high-performance production systems, then you don't want the potentiality of arbitrary performance degradation or non-deterministic behavior. Instead, you would prefer to solve the root cause -- such as by increasing the amount of memory available to the process or system, so that swap is no longer required.

An engineer adding swap to a system is like a doctor treating a patient's symptoms instead of curing their disease. Both are useful but one is preferable. If you encounter a situation where you could solve an application problem by adding swap, then an even better solution is to address the root cause -- ensure the application doesn't run out of physical memory. Swap is a band-aid that masks a risk better addressed directly. Hence: no swap in production.

(On the other hand, it might be fine to employ swap in production for services that aren't performance sensitive, and where it's preferable to accept the performance hit from using swap rather than pay more for better hardware. That's a fine trade-off if consciously made. In my experience, variations in performance are usually much more problematic to a business than changes to cost.)

<comment><USER42> > generally no swap in production.

This is a bad policy. The problem is that it breaks Linux's overcommit logic. Many applications allocate huge chunks of virtual memory far in excess of what they actually use. Due to the magic of virtual memory, this doesn't get mapped to physical memory until it's actually used.

The trouble is that there's no mechanism in any programming language I'm aware of that allows the OS to retcon an allocation. The only tool the kernel has at its disposal is the oom killer. So if you allocate too much, and you have swap disabled, the oom killer has to step in and kill something even if you're only using half your ram.

This is bad enough, but in addition to this, you have vfs cache to worry about. If you have 64GB ram, your applications are using 40GB, and you have 22GB cache, you and I might assume you have 24GB free, but the OS only sees 2GB free, and a few allocations might trigger the oom killer if they happen faster than the vfs can dump cache. (which is surprisingly slow) With swap, this isn't a big deal, because the pages don't actually get assigned until they are used, which happens later, so the vfs has plenty of time to evict.

The point of swap isn't to give you more memory. It's so the OS can keep its promises about memory allocation and overcommitting.

<comment><USER20> > So if you allocate too much, and you have swap disabled, the oom killer has > to step in and kill something even if you're only using half your ram.

You can allocate all the memory you want, the OOM killer only steps in when you actually use all the the memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm coming to the conclusion that many technical problems are actually morale problems. This especially goes for flamebait, where some people come down heavily on one side of the argument or another.

If you don't care, it's much easier to default to someone else's directive, or complain about a toolset you haven't bothered to learn.

</comment><comment><USER44> Interesting combination of the "yes men" parroting the "no men"! Great example!

</comment><comment><USER45> i was at this company when this happened, and oh boy, EVERYONE who knew the person in question and the 'new' kernel feature got some amazing, long-lasting and well deserved laughs.

btw, it was /proc/<idiot's username>, not /dev :)

<comment><USER46> I didn't recognize the story until you corrected the path. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1242831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1242831)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The issue here isn't with "Mr No", it's with those who mindlessly parrot his policies.

I've met "Mr No" at Google, and he is in fact quite a reasonable and funny guy.

</comment><comment><USER48> I've heard the "kernel extension guy" story at my last job; it's fairly well- known there although it wasn't a "completely obvious change", it was heavily obfuscated and possibly done over several PRs in order to sneak it in. Hadn't heard any subsequent stories though, including the swap story of the rest of the article.

</comment><comment><USER49> I used to have a "don't know/can't remember" man in my team.

Can you recall what this code you wrote previously do? "I can't remember."

Do you know where the files are placed? "I don't know."

Where are the documentations for xxx. "I don't know."

Do you know the difference between xxx in testing in production server? "I can't remember."

It was frustrating.

9 out of 10 questions were "I don't knows" and "I can't remembers".

I'd much rather he said yes or no.

<comment><USER50> Of course it would be great if everyone remembered everything, but isn't an "I don't know" better than an 80% guess? The longer I do this job, the more likely I am to say I don't know, when I don't know.

> Can you recall what this code you wrote previously do?

What it _actually_ does might be different from what I remember. It might have been changed since then -- maybe by me, maybe by someone else. I might have made a mistake in the first place, and it doesn't do what I think. "I'm not sure, let's look at it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I still have an internal no-man that says "Don't use OR's in where clauses" in my head from years ago, then I have to stop myself and think "OK lets actually test the performance of this particular query rather than rely on a no-man policy in another company from years ago"!

</comment><comment><USER52> Most developers probably view sysadmnis as "no men". You want to do WHAT in production? _flipoff_

</comment><comment><USER53> I think of most in-house corporate lawyers as playing the role of "no men". There job is to highlight risks and stop things from happening. It's a rare lawyer who understands business goals and can balance them against risks.

<comment><USER54> That's not the lawyer's job - the lawyers' job is to present the risks, not to make the decisions as to whether the risk is worthwhile

<comment><USER55> In theory. In practice it often turns out that the decision makers think that any risk at all is unacceptable, giving the lawyers de-facto control.

<comment><USER54> In which case you have poor decision makers, not poor lawyers.

The benefit of domain aware lawyers is they can explain the specific risks and help the decision makers apply those risks to the business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Trust but verify. I'd bet if the author went to the original source, the "no man" himself, they may find that there is actually no such policy! Just a mishearing of a conversation parroted by "wrong people".

<comment><USER11> "Trust but verify" litteraly meant "Don't trust" (as in "don't trust the Russians" in context). Was it the nuance you intended ?

<comment><USER57> That's not what it meant. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify)

<comment><USER11> does it ?

> Reagan used the phrase to emphasize "the extensive verification procedures > that would enable both sides to monitor compliance with the treaty"

<comment><USER57> But you have to look at why he used that particular phrasing–a clever bit of wordplay to quickly get the idea across to Russians in familiar terms. It's a Russian figure of speech _in the first place._

<comment><USER11> "Wordplay" is too generous IMO. The original russian proverb is also double speak, as we would say now.

It's obvious when applied to trivial situations:

"I trust my wife, but I take the time to verify her phone every night and check the private eye report of her day"

We wouldn't call that "trust", pretty much the opposite

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> One time my app started crashing when I added a large async routine. I ssh'd in and topd and noticed memory and swap were maxed out. Doubled the swap and it runs just like it did before.

Gotta love simple fixes.

</comment><comment> the-rc I know this "no man", had to work on an approval from him once, and I actually saw the infamous code change that implemented this. I don't remember him reviewing it. IIRC it was sent to a mailing list, to which he might have or have not subscribed.

</comment><comment><USER59> Even saying "no" should have checks and balances.

</comment><comment><USER60> The most important part of a fast car is good brakes.

<comment><USER61> As opposed to stuck brakes, or ones that activate at random.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Sounds like that workplace is a no man's land.

</comment><comment><USER62> Why not just buy more ram?

</comment><comment><USER63> Microsoft used to be like this in 00's (I don't know about now). You had to run everything by Legal, and the default answer from Legal was always "no", no matter what you're asking. Want to use zlib in your product? Even though Windows is using it in like 3 different places already, the answer is still "no". JQuery? Out of the question. Anything more exotic, might not even ask. I'm pretty sure Microsoft wasted hundreds of millions of dollars reinventing a wheel, and doing it badly, over the past few decades.

</comment><comment><USER64> There's also the Maybe guy. All this guy ever says are things like "Maybe that's possible," "in theory that maybe could work," "I'm not sure if that will work."

The thing that the maybe guy differs from the Yes or the No guy is that he's always 100% correct. He's never wrong ever.

</comment><comment><USER65> The extreme example of Chesterton's Fence.

Is this, then, Chesterton's Berlin Wall? That is, a completely idiotic waste based on idiot politics?

<comment><USER66> I suppose it's also worth noting that Chesterton's Fence is an (imagined) real physical thing which required time and resources to construct. Thus the odds are pretty good that it was made for some real purpose, as opposed to a policy which is ephemeral and does not intrinsically require a significant expense of time or effort to create.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> May as well start off with an introduction to toxic masculinity.

<comment><USER37> How so? The author is a woman.</comment></comment>


You Are Post-Scarcity. Now Be an Activist. - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Jon-Rodriguez/Career-Advice/You-Are-Post-Scarcity-Now-Be-an-Activist

<comment><USER2> This is interesting but from the wrong angle.

Instead, we need to have a wealth cap. No one in the world needs to have more than 10 million dollars in total wealth. Not just a 100% tax on income over that amount; I mean a 100% tax on appraised wealth over that amount.

The additional tax revenue is divided by the country's population size as a small, baseline income to every citizen. Everyone gets a small income.

The main reason for doing this isn't to punish the rich; no one can cry at having 10 million, inflation-adjusted. It's to deflate power. In 2007, the top 1% had 43% of the financial wealth; the next 4%, 29%. The bottom 80%, 8%.

The very concept of the billionaire is hedonistic and greedy. No one needs or deserves to have so much when others have so little. It's a bug in the system; a flaw in the design.

If you have a race and someone is 300 meters ahead of you, you can say, "Wow, great! That person must have trained hard and have a lot of talent." If someone is 40 kilometers ahead, you can say, "Wait, who took a taxi?" Some distance can be assigned to effort, skill and luck. But past that, it's indicative of a flaw in the system or a crime. Let's change that. It's time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a bad article, however:

"Throw on the cost of a small apartment and a used car, and you've arguably got all you could want: health, friends, and intellectual exploration."

"Arguably" is the key word here. I, for one, want a helicopter and a beer spa.</comment>


Webbynode Takes on Heroku with Rapid App Deployment - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webbynode.com/2010/01/22/rapidbeta/ <comment><USER2> Here's a documentation on how the process works: [http://guides.webbynode.com/articles/readystacks/rapid- apps....](http://guides.webbynode.com/articles/readystacks/rapid-apps.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> ... and two screencasts:

<http://blog.webbynode.com/rapid></comment>


Ask HN: When would be a good time to start looking for summer internships? - <AUTHOR>

Last year I had to pass up on an internship because my college forced me into a compulsory summer training program (a terrible ASP.NET course). This year, though, I want to work with a real startup on a real product. Since I have never had to look for a job or internship before, I'm more than a little clueless in this area. Possibly stupid questions incoming.
- I usually see students sending out emails in February/March. Is this too early? Too late?
- When sending out my résumé, is it fine to mention technologies I am not familiar with but am going to study this semester? For example, is it all right to add a field that says "Learning this semester: Lisp"?
- What about applying for jobs that are not related to my degree? I'm an engineering student, but I also like to write. Sadly, my "portfolio" only includes my blog.
- Do early-stage startups usually even hire interns?
- Is it a good idea to apply to businesses located in a different city? In case I'm hired, I would obviously have to live in a strange city for the duration of my internship. Sounds fun and scary at the same time. What does HN think?
- When should I negotiate payments?
- How much does GPA matter?
- When writing a résumé, would failed attempts at building software count as "experience"?
Thanks for listening. My apologies if any of this has been asked before.
EDIT: formatting. <comment><USER2> I've had a summer internship after every school year I've had in college. First to answer your questions, put whatever you want. If you're applying to jobs not related to your degree, well, it's up to you. Cater your resume don't have a one size fits all resume. Is it worth your time though? What do you ultimately want to do? Yes, some early stage startups hire interns. It's normally easier to get a job at a large company offering internships. That way, you get the corporate experience early and realize how much better it is to work for startups. If you apply out of city, consider costs maybe. Generally, it's more fun and adventurous and you're isolated so you end up learning a lot more somehow. Negotiate payments when they tell you how much you're offered. Generally, if it's your 1st internship, you have no leverage to negotiate. Failed attempts should just be considered incomplete projects. Don't list them as experience.

Now, my personal advice is this: if you know what you enjoy doing, try and be a little picky. If you settle for any internship just for the experience, you may become experienced in something you don't enjoy doing. Then, it would be rather difficult to express in your resume that though you are vastly experienced in one thing you really want to be doing something else.

Hope it helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> December-January. Most of my interns have come from out of town (although moving to Austin for a summer is hardly a hardship). Failures definitely count as experience, although obviously you don't want to spin anything as a failure.

<comment><USER4> I agree with failures, although many employers want to know WHY something failed - and what you would do next time to avoid said failure.

It's ok to fail but it's not ok to fail and not know why and what you learned from it. Least from my experience.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Critique for cold email - <AUTHOR> Dear insiders of real start-ups, I am visiting silicon valley shortly and want to set up meetings with companies I admire. May I have 5 minutes of your precious time and make some comment on the email I am trying to send? Thank you for your help. Dear insiders of real start-ups, I am visiting silicon valley shortly and want to set up meetings with companies I admire. May I have 5 minutes of your precious time and make some comment on the email I am trying to send? Thank you for your help.
subject: Question about * (a consumer electronics field) market
Great job founding the most inspiring * * (a consumer electronics field) company!
My name is Ziqiao Jin, I am running a   (a consumer electronics field) start-up project and wish I could ask your for some advice. May I have 15 minutes of your time? It will be great if we can have coffee around February 10th.
I am interested in the   (a consumer electronics field) too, have been doing research for a year now. If you want to know anything specific about the Japanese * * (a consumer electronics field) market, I am happy conduct research for you.
Thank you for your consideration.
Best, Jin <comment><USER2> You are asking for more than 15 minutes of their time due to transitions and responding to emails, yet you have no value proposition. How are you going to make it worth their while? How can you provide real value to their startup?

Make it short and the value prop clear and your responses will go up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shorten it. Try to just ask a simple prodding question to get a response.

<comment><AUTHOR> So I just ask for A meeting that is ok? No need to "show I did homework" and "prove I am worthy?"</comment></comment>


Leaked TPP Investment Chapter Reveals Serious Threat to User Safeguards - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/leaked-tpp-investment-chapter-reveals-serious-threat-user-safeguards <comment><USER2> In English, anyone?

It's really hard to follow this. I realize they are trying to make it an explanation that normal (but interested) people can read. But it's not working.

Maybe an example up front would help. Something like: If this is enacted, then ... (some common use case involving fair use and how it would be impacted).

I know it takes a lawyer to read this stuff. But they should maybe pass it through a couple of layers of translation to try to communicate what it means, so that people can get on board with opposing it, if that's the right thing to do. If EFF can't communicate this stuff, who can?

<comment><USER3> The comic[1] that I posted in the previous thread has a nice overview about the situation.

The specific issue the EFF article is pointing out is how the ISDS is designed to trumps national sovereignty, so business can strong-arm countries into removing any law they don't like.

It works more or less like this:

1) pass TPP as a _treaty_ , which by definition has the same power as a constitutional amendment. (this is probably a serious bug in the constitution). This means TPP trums congress.

2) TPP sets up an international tribunal (ISDS) that hears complaints from businesses. (i.e. "Australia is hurting our tobacco sales with their plain packaging laws"[2])

3) The tribunal, as mentioned in this article, would be staffed by, "three private-sector attorneys who take turns being the judge and the corporate advocate." This conflict of interest would be a serious violation of ethics requirements in most legal systems.

4) The tribunal rules that your local law violates some _foreign_ requirement, as determined by the ISDS and their business-assigned judges, and the local legislature is forced to repeal the law. ("Australia's plain packaging laws is seizing the trademarks of Philip Moriss, in violation of a 1993 trade agreement if we carefully abuse the agreement's language")

That's the short version, and I'm leaving out some details, of course. It should work as a decent overview of ISDS is a threat to national sovereignty.

[1] [http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/](http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/)

[2] this example is covered well by John Oliver: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UsHHOCH4q8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UsHHOCH4q8)

edit: oops.. s/ISPS/ISDS/

<comment><USER4> Treaties do not have "the same power as a Constitutional amendment." They have the same power as ordinary laws. See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Money_Cases](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Money_Cases). And the Constitution takes precedence over both: Reid v. Covert. If they are not self-effectuating and Congress does not pass enabling legislation, they have no domestic effect. See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medell%C3%ADn_v._Texas](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medell%C3%ADn_v._Texas).

<comment><USER5> ...because you don't see any laws that goes against the constitution being ruled everyday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why do I feel like some of the EFF articles are distinctly one-sided when it comes to certain topics? For example what about illegal government expropriation or interest-based selective-quasi-legal interference in economic affairs (i.e. Yukos) - or rampant ignorance of patent and copyright laws (various Chinese Manufacturers).

Unfortunately when an issue is presented entirely black and white as:

 _confer expansive powers on corporations and undermine democratic rules_

 _we cannot let such a secretive, corporate-driven agency to pass digital regulations in secret._

 _etc. etc._

It's hard to come away with any real understanding of the issues at hand.

Disclaimer: I am longtime supporter and EFF member.

<comment><USER7> I have a similar feeling, but I think the answer is that the EFF _is_ a one- sided organization--their mission is to form opinions on these topics and fight for what they think is right.

I think of them as an "advocacy" nonprofit, and there are plenty of those on the other side as well, trying to make their case against things like government expropriation. The balanced view, to the extent it can exist, would be somewhere between the two sides; each listener synthesizes their own balance point, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _> These tribunals are usually comprised of three private-sector attorneys who take turns being the judge and the corporate advocate._

Have alternate structures been considered for these extranational tribunals/courts, e.g. who represents the public interest? How would the public grant legitimacy to a secret commercial court which regulates Internet content, for example?

<comment><USER9> Why would they consider such? Those who should be representing the public interest in these discussions have clearly been bought out already. And being so secretive, why would they need to even pretend to put in place any safeguards for public interest?

<comment><USER8> What will happen when international laws which defy reason start being enforced, and are not understood or supported by the national public or their national legislators?

<comment><USER10> Yes, Dutch "look-the-other-way" laws related to recreational marijuana use come to my mind (guess where I live). It's no secret that neighbouring countries are not happy with the drug policy in the Netherlands. And Europe puts pressure on the government to change the laws.

I don't know everything about all _these_ secret negotiations, but the feeling I get when I look at all the past attempts at these super-national laws and treaties is that I dislike and distrust them.

I remember that during the world cup football in South Afrika a group of Dutch women were arrested because they showed up in a stadium dressed in the 'Bavaria jurkjes' (lousely translates to 'Bavaria dresses')[0]. Fifa had super-national laws in place, some of them regarding advertisement. It was apparently illegal for companies to advertise in the stadium during the matches except for the official sponsors. The dresses were seen as advertisement and the people wearing them were arrested.

The women said they were unaware of any advertisement going on, and were just wearing their countries colours.

[0] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world- cup/7830319/...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world- cup/7830319/World-Cup-2010-Police-arrest-women-in-Dutch-orange-dresses.html)

Edit:

I don't doubt that this was a marketing stunt, still, I decide what I wear and where I do it. Not some entertainment company that should only be concerned with running the sports event and not the money grubbing.

<comment><USER11> I don't know about that specific instance, but often the kind of shenanigans you're talking about are a separate issue: genuine, national laws are passed by the national government, because they are insisted upon by the international professional bodies as a condition of awarding a major competition to a given host nation.

As it happens, I have never understood why prospective host nations allow themselves to be bullied in this way. It is a transparent betrayal of their own populations in favour of big business. Moreover, pragmatically, a lot of these sporting events make an enjoyable spectacle for a lot of people over the few days they last for, but they rarely bring the supposed long term benefits that justify all the hoop-jumping involved in hosting them, and in plenty of cases their legacy has been serious financial and/or infrastructure problems for the host nation.

So yes, it seems long past time for organisations like the IOC and FIFA to be reminded of their place or told to take a hike and host their next international event in West Nowheria. But this is a separate issue to some of the current terms being considered for international agreements, which would reportedly allow _any_ business that didn't like a national policy to sue the national government and recover lost profits in any signatory state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did the TPP risks to harm both Europeans and Americans, or only one side?

<comment><USER13> I think it risks to harm everyone. At least based on the EFF's analysis since IANAL.

It sounds like this will make it easier for corporations to extort signatory countries.

As I see it, it will probably promote patent trolls, draconian copyright laws that will be extremely favorable to corporations, etc.

This is really not good at all.

<comment><USER14> If it is so bad then why is the EU signing on?

<comment><USER15> Exactly, Canada(my native country) has already signed, any Canadian citizen that is aware, is opposed. We also have a bill currently tabled in Canadian parliament called Bill C-51 which is an absolutely absurd piece of legislation, it will effectively muzzle all lawful protest in Canada because it will allow the government to deem a project "critical infrastructure" at will and anyone protesting then falls under the blanket definition of terrorist and can be detained for up to a year without access to legal counsel. At the same time they are introducing changes to informant protection laws that will allow them to literally enter evidence from completely anonymous sources i.e. completely fabricated lol. Sadly we no longer practice democracy in my country.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:Feedback on website for toddlers and preschoolers - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
As a pet project I wanted to do an Iphone or Android app for my three year old daughter.
I was looking at diveintohtml5.org and thought that it was easier to create a website that worked in mobile devices and came up with http://www.microangels.in.
Most of the existing websites for toddlers/preschoolers use flash so I wanted to try out a site in HTML5. Here is the initial version , I have added a few books which are mostly images . I want to add a few games as the next step.
Please let me know your feed back on what you think will be useful for toddlers  . If you have any
 other suggestions on how to improve this website and feedback/critique on the existing site is appreciated.
I have checked this on my nexus one and the page renders fine but do not have an Iphone so it would be great if you let me know if it works well on a iOS device . This site does not work in IE as of now. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Link  <http://www.microangels.in>

</comment><comment><USER2> I just checked it on iphone and looks fine, I was also able to flip through the pages of the books.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to find your purpose in Life? - <AUTHOR>

How does one find his purpose in life. I'm only 21 and I'm at crossroad I have no idea what I want to do. I thought it was programming for a long time almost 4 years learning it. Took Java class in College got a 4.0 and spent time learning Python on my own for a year or so. But lately I get bored siting more than 2 or 3 outs in front of a computer coding. I've been thinking joining the Navy or Air force a lot.<p>Lately I've been trying to figure what my purpose is on this earth. I could use advice on how some of you found your purpose on what you like to do in life at a young age? I'm I just lazy and unmotivated? <comment><USER2> You aren't bored 'because coding', you're bored because what you're coding doesn't excite you. For some people that's okay - it pay's a wage, and they find other outlets for excitement (or none).

If that's not you, find something to get excited about. Volunteer, join some clubs, get a job completely outside your sphere (not so easy I know). If it's something you can apply your coding skills to, fantastic! If it's something that requires you to learn new skills, even better!

But whatever it is, use it to learn from, not because it's 'your purpose'. Your purpose will find you, you just need to put yourself out there so it has a chance. (And locking yourself into a military career is not it, IMHO, as although it has its own merits, it has greater drawbacks.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Find a person whose life you love, and make them mentor you. That is going to help you find purpose. If they won't mentor you, find another person. Odds are you know more than one person whose life you love. However, let me warn you. No matter whose life you love, that life has plenty that you will not love, even though you have not seen those parts yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> I didnt find my purpose in life until recently. At the age of 21, I just wanted to get a job in order to help my family pay the bills. I think the best way to find your purpose in life is to try different things.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm at this stage as well I just want to help support my family.

<comment><USER4> \- I wish you the best.</comment></comment></comment>


Sam Altman tweeted, asking for advice about women - <AUTHOR> http://getintoycombinator.com/sam-altman-newly-president-of-ycombinator-tweeted-asking-for-advice-about-women/

<comment> atom-morgan The president of YC publicly tweets to his 16.1k followers which can also be seen and answered by anyone who hears of this tweet. Not only that, but he's addressing an issue he and YC have received a lot of negative comments on in the past. And this is _sad_?</comment>


Ask HN: Google Adsense for Search Alternatives - <AUTHOR>

I am forced to look one because we are building our own search engine and want to show ads alongside. Google won't send ads without their search results. What we would want is something that gives us an Ads feed for a query. Is there something like this in market ? <comment><USER2> Don't think anyone has size/scale except big 3: google, yahoo, MS. Smaller alternatives are stuff like AdBrite.</comment>


Transferwise global outage, app and credit cards also down - <AUTHOR> https://transferwise.com/ <comment><USER2> Been down for 7 hours as of now: [https://twitter.com/transferwise](https://twitter.com/transferwise)</comment>


Sift: Highest ranked early stage finance startup in the app store - <AUTHOR> http://siftwallet.com <comment><AUTHOR> Say you bought a new coffee maker and a few days later the price drops! That has to be one of the worst feelings in the world! Fortunately, price protection is a little known feature available on over 50% of credit cards which will allow you to get reimbursed for this. Getting your money back can be a pain but Sift will automatically take care of automatically getting your money back when something like this happens! We have already gotten back over $200,000 for consumers over the past year and Apple featured us today on their main page with Pokemon and Sonic! We have also been featured in Techcrunch, Huffington post, Pymnts, Silicon Valley Business Journal, and on hundreds of newspapers through Associated Press (which called us "Credit card Treasure Hunt").

Most Americans, who average between two and four credit cards, are aware of their common benefits such as points, merchandise rewards, and travel. But credit card perks are like an iceberg – some of the most valuable benefits are underneath the surface, hidden behind jargon and fine print or are hard to take advantage of. Outside of price protection you have things like flight delay insurance, 90 day theft and damage, extended warranties etc.. We couldn't believe that so much money was being left on the table when it belonged in the pockets of consumers!

With Sift we set out to turn this upside down and build an experience to bring these benefits to the forefront.

<comment><USER2> > Say you bought a new coffee maker and a few days later the price drops! That > has to be one of the worst feelings in the world!

Even by the scale set by common marketing hyperbole, this is a ludicrous claim.</comment></comment>


Paul Allen diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/11/paul_allen_diagnosed_with_non-hodgkins_lymphoma.html

<comment><USER2> > We would ask you to respect Paul's privacy and not discuss this outside of > the office.

So, by all means, please forward along to techflash post-haste. While I agree this is "interesting" in a newsworthy sense, I think it's a dick move for it to be shared with the news media other than by Paul's consent.

</comment><comment><USER3> These are very sad news. I truly hope he can beat it.

</comment><comment><USER4> In the words of courage wolf "You call it cancer. I call it a challenge"

I hope Allen beats the disease.

</comment><comment><USER5> Keep your hands off his Microsoft shares Bill Gates.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sad to hear this. On a morbid note, the Computer History Museum will likely be getting a hell of an equipment donation from him upon his inevitable death. Allen is, evidently, a ravenous computer collector. Also, his boat was just moored in Alameda for a complete overhaul.</comment>


Launchable.io - A quick and easy way to test ideas - <AUTHOR> http://launchable.io

<comment><USER2> $100/month haha.

Here's a few useful landing pages tools. [http://populr.me](http://populr.me) \- has free domain mapping etc... at first glance, it seems to do everything this page site does.

[http://strikingly.com](http://strikingly.com) -pretty sweet. [http://jetstrap.com](http://jetstrap.com) [http://smore.com](http://smore.com)

Cool tool though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I noticed there's a lot of free versions, I just don't like their business model. Although trying to buck the trend when there's already free versions out there might be impossible, we'll see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this just a launch rock clone that offers less and charges more?

<comment><AUTHOR> It will offer more, maybe the page wasn't very clear. Primarily, the landing pages will have that much content on, as oppose to the minimal launchrock page. I don't think there's enough information on the launchrock version. I was planning on helping with the content, as well as guiding them through it with the UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't help but feel that this is an idea, that while probably worthwhile, is similarly built as a weekend project for a bored programmer.

If that's the case, I'd assume one of your biggest threats is an open source, or free, version of the paid product.

So I ask, why the high price, especially for something that may only be visible for ~1 month?

<comment><USER5> I met the founder of a successful service that builds landing pages for people and he said that startups aren't actually very good for them as they fairly quickly either go under or get a real site.

Most of their business is for things like real estate, people running seminars, more small scale types of business than the kinds of sites you typically associated with landing pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This could serve as a really nice method of securing consulting engagements without the typical formalities of prospecting consulting engagements. I think $99/mo and especially free fall way short of things like "copywriter help" (there are many better ways of phrasing this), and you could essentially sell a retainer-until-you-launch product where you do _nothing_ but help startups launch and setup experiments to net more email opt-ins/presales (all the while charging significantly more.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes this is really what sparked the idea, I still get asked all the time to help setup a little one-pager (launchrock just isn't enough information) but I can't justify the time to do, hence a hosted option. Expanding that to just helping them get off the ground is a nice idea. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Hey, you're a little early. We haven't launched yet but if you leave your > email address we'll let you know when we do.

So meta.

<comment><USER8> Kind of like "Stanley, Start-up Founder".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> LOL. Okay I have to admit that was pretty damn funny. 10 sign-ups for free and then $99/mo? LOL.

<comment><USER10> I'd down-vote this if I could.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't want to be "that guy", but I was immediately turned off by the grammatically incorrect comma in the call-to-action. There should be no comma after "Say hello".

<comment><AUTHOR> I over-use commas, all the bloody, time. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hilarious, I made a similar website in 2 hours yesterday - [http://confirmidea.com](http://confirmidea.com). I'm experimenting with this idea.. running a google experiment with two different screenshots. Why not? 2 hours for fun. If enough people said yes, create a basic service and charge $5 an A/B Test. Free for one page was my idea. $99 is ridiculous.

<comment><AUTHOR> This took me maybe 4 hours, but over a weekend. Yes the price is pretty high, did you A/B test yours?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have some excellent feedback on the site, thanks everyone who signed up and left it.

One idea is to charge $99 for unlimited ideas/landing pages per month, which I really like. Then maybe $15 for one page.

Also, thanks to "firstname.lastname@example.com" who simply says, "Lame". :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand. I spent over 5 minutes on that site. I read everything on the page, and I still have no idea what it's supposed to do. It generates a page for me? I have to put in my email address to do that? Why?

Oh well.

<comment><AUTHOR> The page is the product, kind of. I think I have a lot more work to do on making it clear. Thanks and sorry for the confusion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What differentiates this service from either a) just throwing up a Wordpress or SquareSpace site or b) using a service like Launch Rock? Having to pay $99/month just to have your logo displayed seems pretty steep.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the same, but only takes 5 minutes to setup. It provides more space than launchrock for content and explanations of your product/service. And it only costs what most people charge per hour/2 hours. I figured they would only need it for 1 month, hence the larger price - but I'm beginning to see that gets people's backs up.

Based on your feedback I think I need to expand and include these differences as part of the landing page. This would also be a useful exercise for people using it - to compare themselves to the competition.

Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > We charge the equivalent of 2 hours from a professional developer.

I would say 1 hour, i.e. $99/hr, is a more accurate statement. This would also help make the product appear more affordable, and as a better investment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really? okay, thanks. I figured 1 or 2 hours of time as a cost would be fair, but it doesn't seem to go down well. I had also planned on them not using it for more than 1 month. So I guess I'll half it until people stop considering it a joke :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Way too expensive compared to laucnhrock and lauchnrock-likes. For 99$ per month, I have a full featured BaaS... not a homepage only.

</comment><comment><USER16> Haha, you're charging 99$ a month for a template. That was a good joke.

<comment><USER17> No need to criticize their price so harshly. If it's too high, they won't make money, and they'll learn.

They obviously think it's worth $99 - your sarcasm doesn't help anybody.

<comment><USER16> I'm not only criticising their price. I'm writing off this whole thing as a 'joke', because honestly, that is what it looks like. Have you looked at the source code? You should take a look at this[1]. If you say "well, that's not so bad - they don't know how to make two classes with different background colours, but who cares about that? Bootstrap is totally justified", you'll love this little gem[2]. That's right, they're including 265 kilobytes of javascript (and violating jQuery's MIT license in the process, but I'll let that slide) for a form validator.

If you want my honest advice: do not go near this thing. It was built by developers who are either playing a very dark joke on HN or do not have a clue about web development.

The 99$/month price tag is what makes me think it is a joke. I have asked a friend of mine who does freelance web development from time to time and "about a hundred bucks" is what he'd charge for developing a single page built with Bootstrap.

[1] [http://launchable.io/assets/application-f12be0d179f7589b0d58...](http://launchable.io/assets/application-f12be0d179f7589b0d588fa0c333f15d.css) [2] [http://launchable.io/assets/application-99f549a279e10ccc7e06...](http://launchable.io/assets/application-99f549a279e10ccc7e069b5f497b07be.js)

<comment><USER18> Really not sure what you're on about here.

First off, trying to use their inclusion of Bootstrap as a negative comes off as elitist nonsense. Second, the file you are discussing is actually 131KB uncompressed and 43KB when gzipped. No issues there.

This sounds to me like a serious case of "I hate this because someone else is making money off of it instead of me".

<comment><USER16> That's strange - I took another look at the JavaScript and it is indeed 131KB when uncompressed. I could have sworn it was 265KB last night.

Anyway, including Bootstrap to use two containers with different background colours is a lack of professionalism. Why can't you make it yourself? I'd argue that it would take an experienced web developer approximately the same time to do it without Bootstrap.

I don't really hate it because he's making money off of it, it's just that it feels like a ripoff to me. For $99/month [1] you can get a new website, specifically designed for you by a web developer, every month.

[1] it looks like he has realised $99/month is a joke.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Write a Maths Library in 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/maths-lib-2016/ <comment><USER2> In regards to the section on `vectorcall`, I think that the UNIX x64 ABI specifies that any floating point/SSE parameters are passed in the XMM* registers, so it _should_ stay in the registers the whole time.

OTOH I am not sure if GCC actually does this in practice. Whenever I've had to read x64 code produced by GCC with -S, I've noticed it tends to constant spill quite a lot.

<comment><USER3> Does that still work if the floats are contained in a small struct? (a la float3, float3x3 etc)

<comment><USER2> To be honest, I have only limited experience with vectors at the moment, so I'm not entirely sure. I scanned the ABI[0], but in my current sleep-deprived state I can't make all that much sense of it, sorry. You might have better luck!

[0]: [http://www.x86-64.org/documentation/abi-0.99.7.pdf](http://www.x86-64.org/documentation/abi-0.99.7.pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


Did the FBI Just Unleash a Hacker Army on Apple? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/29/did-the-fbi-just-unleash-a-hacker-army-on-apple.html <comment><USER2> Occam razor: Apple objected at the unlock ordeal being public, not at the unlocking act per se. Now The phone is unlocked and they won't tell how, exactly as per the original apple apple request.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/46k4ke/apple_ha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/46k4ke/apple_had_asked_the_fbi_to_issue_application_for/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple: Enemies of the State.</comment>


The merits of an emoji referral code - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/rethinking-referral-codes-or-11f1686bb964 <comment><USER2> Better is the enemy of good.

My grandma already has trouble finding characters like # on her keyboard, I can't wait till I have to spend time on the phone with her guiding her to the emoji she needs.

Does anyone know what the state is of screen readers, braille readers, and other accessibility tools when it comes to emoji?

<comment><USER3> I don't know the actual state of it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were easy for screen readers to interpret emoji, since you just have to have it read out the human-readable name accompanying the Unicode codepoint. You'd presumably get "for free" any new emoji that are added. </wild speculation>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You'd obviously want to limit the set of available emoji to avoid any ambiguities but assuming you do—is there anything stopping their use in frequent flier numbers, passwords, etc.?

</comment><comment><USER4> And people can reliably enter them on all platforms. Oh, wait...

I guess if you only enter codes inside your app and you build an emoji- keyboard into the app it might work... ?

<comment><AUTHOR> At this point, emoji support is almost ubiquitous (at least in the US). I'd imagine that within the next couple of years emoji support will be within a rounding error of 100%.

<comment><USER5> There's no obvious way to type emojis on Windows 10. Also, most emojis are almost unintelligible at small sizes because of the black and white font and faulty ClearType rendering.

Most emojis aren't even visible on Windows 7.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. Typing emojis on non-mobile devices is a pain right now. Cmd+Ctrl+Space on Macs brings up an emoji-picker, but I doubt many people know that.

I guess this should be scoped to mobile-only applications. Web services can also use traditional referral links so a memorable referral code isn't as big of a UX win.

<comment><USER5> I think the idea is bad overall. Old versions of Android, still widespread, can't enter emoji either.

Best referral code I've seen is a phone number: that way you know it's not going to spread beyond the inner circle of family and friends of the referrer. (Unless you don't want that, of course.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Using emojis to extend the available character set is taken off. Technologies like the QR code did not catch on partially because they were co-opted by marketers. Is it emojis turn?

[http://emoticode.com/](http://emoticode.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> The ideal referral code is a clickable link. It's the same reason domain names are fading: friction from issues like being too easy to mistype, hard to remember, scammers etc.

Most apps let you message or mail a referral link to a friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> That doesn't work all that well on mobile apps, since users first have to download a new app before you can record the referral code. Having a link click persist through that process is nearly impossible.

<comment><USER7> Make the link go to a web page with a "download app" link -- the app can start and look for a cookie left by the web page.

Or simply download the app and click again.

I'm not saying not to have user-readable ref codes (though emojis are a terrible choice -- you can't read them aloud), I'm saying make typing them the very rare case.</comment></comment></comment>


New in Linux 4.3: Ambient capabilities - <AUTHOR> https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit?id=58319057b7847667f0c9585b9de0e8932b0fdb08

<comment><USER2> How convoluted.</comment>


Sci-Hub.love: The latest Sci-Hub working domain - <AUTHOR> https://sci-hub.love/ <comment><AUTHOR> Note: I created [https://whereisscihub.now.sh](https://whereisscihub.now.sh) a while ago [0], which lists working domains based on what's listed at WikiData. Although I'm not sure who runs sci-hub.love and whether it's affliated with Sci-Hub, it does seem to automatically check which domains are working, which makes it more reliable.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16591962)

</comment><comment><USER2> I've been working for weeks on backing up the whole thing. Working with that much data on a budget is a challenge.</comment>


Canada fought the war on science. Here's how scientists won - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/4/29/15479888/harper-war-science-resistance-march-climate <comment><USER2> Not funding as much of your research as you want isn't a "war". A war is actively denying scientific evidence.</comment>


A bot that tweets anonymous Wikipedia edits from IP addresses in the US Congress - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/congressedits <comment><USER2> Some of these are pretty funny. Apparently someone in the House of Representatives is a huge Carly Rae Jepsen fan: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=800487966&oldid=79...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=800487966&oldid=799703808)

<comment><USER3> And someone felt the need to add "comedienne" to the list of skills of Gwyneth Paltrow

[https://twitter.com/congressedits/status/913086284058554368](https://twitter.com/congressedits/status/913086284058554368)

<comment><USER4> I'm a nobody that adds pertinent yet mundane stuff to wikipedia all the time. Why would members of the Civil Service be any different?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At the risk of stating the obvious, this is mainly interesting as a study in what interns do when they're bored.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't say it is interns when there are edits that are made that are clearly politically motivated.[1][1.5][2][3]

And personally I believe they know about this twitter bot and edit random articles on purpose. There's a lot in there that have just added a space at the end of a sentence. That's obscurification.

Then there are just weird ones[4]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694134&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694134&oldid=804694104)

[1.5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=804534506)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=794544004&oldid=78...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=794544004&oldid=789155816)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804108161&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804108161&oldid=804097887)

[4] [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=256336084&old...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=256336084&oldid=256336031&rcid=867871649)

<comment><USER5> You think there's a conspiracy to maliciously alter Wikipedia and to obscure those public edits under a mountain of seemingly innocent changes? But also that the conspirators are so naive they make the changes from their work computers without a VPN?

People who intern on the Hill tend to have strong feelings about politics. Makes sense that some of the pages the edit are political.

<comment><USER6> >You think there's a conspiracy to maliciously alter Wikipedia

> People who intern on the Hill tend to have strong feelings about politics.

Probably. I think there is enough evidence to question it. It would take a lot of analysis that I'm not bored enough to perform to prove it. But the few times that I have checked this over the years I see a lot of junk and then edits on hot topics where things keep getting added and removed. I remember one on the Dakota pipelines that completely removed the mention of protestors.

1) They are clearly editing things that are politically motivating. See my examples and scroll through more. This can be attributed to embarrassment or trying the sling mud at opponents. Can you honestly tell me that you wouldn't put these types of editing above politicians? And this is really all I'm suggesting that is happening in terms of "maliciously alter Wikipedia." (I don't think it is really malicious)

2) Most probably don't realize this twitter account exists let alone that their IPs can be tracked.

2.1) Their name isn't attached anyway.

2.2) How often do people actually check this Twitter or Wiki logs?

2.3) Why are they making extremely dumb edits like adding a space at the end of a paragraph? I'm sure that some edits are bored interns/politicians, but there are definitely weird edits that look more like obscurification than worthwhile edits.

There is no incentive for them to mask their IP, because it still can't be traced back to them. And people knowing "someone" changed a wiki entry in a misleading way just gets people to think "politicians are corrupt". Which is nothing new. So why would they even bother?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> See also [https://twitter.com/parliamentedits](https://twitter.com/parliamentedits) for the UK. Not sure which came first as they were both started in July 2014.

<comment><USER8> From the readme on GitHub[0]: "it was inspired by @parliamentedits."

[0]: [https://github.com/edsu/anon/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/edsu/anon/blob/master/README.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Found some questionable edits:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694134&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694134&oldid=804694104)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=804534506)

<comment><USER10> Those diffs actually seem solid. Words like "bogus" and "baseless" don't make for objective articles.

<comment><USER11> True. But you shouldnt remove words from the headlines of an article being cited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> See also: [https://twitter.com/bankedits](https://twitter.com/bankedits)

</comment><comment><USER13> Most of these are pretty harmless; updates to sports figures, university pages for alumni, celebrities, etc. I didn't see any revisionist history edits like I was expecting.

<comment><USER14> That's what I thought too until I noticed they added a Nazi to the list of alumni. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804058727&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804058727&oldid=803389733)

<comment><USER15> What fails the sniff test about a German having studied abroad at a US university before WWI - when no significant enmity between the two nations yet existed - and, over the next few decades, following a course in life that led him to join the NSDAP and the Waffen-SS? Uncommon, sure. But implausible? (When and by whom was the same information edited into the article about Lombard?)

<comment><USER16> My reaction was the same as yours initially -- weird thing for congressional staff to be spending their time on, but yeah that is a notable alumni (and actually kind of interesting).

But the same user added Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash to the List of University of Missouri alumni article.

All of that could of course could be a coincidence. But it'll be interesting to see whether any of Missouri's representatives start pushing a "universities create evil villains" narrative in the next cycle ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Such a great idea. It's too bad that Twitter doesn't embrace it's programmer base and add integrations like this.

A Zapier-like platform, made available to all Twitter users. Oh baby Jesus..

</comment><comment><USER18> I look forward to finding some time to read through some of these changes this weekend, but what this really makes me crave is a similar bot to track changes that are made to Conservapedia.com – The Trustworthy Encyclopedia™ – which I find very entertaining. Do yourself a favor and peruse some of the revert wars that happen over there.

</comment><comment><USER19> E.g.

Don't call my conspiracy theory "baseless"! [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=804694104&oldid=804534506)

-Fan of anonymous Paul Gosar, Arizona Congressperson,

</comment><comment><USER20> Some intern got bored

[https://twitter.com/congressedits/status/908761643982532609](https://twitter.com/congressedits/status/908761643982532609)

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=800455861&oldid=80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=800455861&oldid=800453377)

</comment><comment><USER22> Any idea on how to find all government IP addresses? specially for other countries

<comment><USER23> You might start by just googling for it and hope somebody has already compiled a list. Outside of that, for an organization that has IP's allocated specifically to them, you can search the ARIN registry.

For the US, you could do something like this if you wanted to find IP's for the Senate:

        $whois "US Senate"@whois.arin.net

which gives back something like:

        # start

        CustName:       US Senate
        Address:        Telecommunications Department
        City:           Washington
        StateProv:      DC
        PostalCode:     20510-7202
        Country:        US
        RegDate:        1992-12-03
        Updated:        2011-03-19
        Ref: https://whois.arin.net/rest/customer/C00594783

        NetRange:       18.104.22.168 - 22.214.171.124
        CIDR:           18.104.22.168/21
        NetName:        UU-63-82-112
        NetHandle:      NET-63-82-112-0-1
        Parent:         UUNET63 (NET-63-64-0-0-1)
        NetType:        Reassigned
        OriginAS:
        Customer:       US Senate (C00594783)
        RegDate:        1992-12-03
        Updated:        2003-05-30
        Ref:            https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-63-82-112-0-1

So the Senate has 184.108.40.206 - 184.108.40.206 assigned. A few caveats though:

1\. Those IP's might not be the ones assigned to desktop computers in staffer's offices. They may only use these for servers, or they might not even be used at all. For all we know, they have access via some random ISP - Spectrum, AT&T, whoever. Hell, they might have dial-up through AOL! In which case, it would be tough to ever really know.

2\. Searching the ARIN registry can be tedious and takes some guesswork. Searching "US Senate"@whois.arin.net will give different results than "U.S. Senate"@whois.arin.net, which gives different results than "United States Senate"@whois.arin.net, etc. There may be a way to use wildcards and other fancy search expressions, but if so, I've never bothered to learn how. Might be worth looking into.

<comment><USER24> What `whois` tool is that? When I try that exact command I get

      % whois "US Senate"@whois.arin.net
      No whois server is known for this kind of object.

      % whois --version
      Version 5.2.7.

      Report bugs to <email@example.com>.

<comment><USER23> More details. This is from a Fedora 24 machine, where I just tested the whois syntax from above and it worked fine.

I guess different versions of the whois command handle this differently. I never knew that until now. Every version I've ever used has supported this kind of query.

        $ whois --version
        jwhois version 4.0, Copyright (C) 1999-2007  Free
        Software Foundation, Inc.
        This program is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO
        WARRANTY; you may redistribute it under the terms of the
        GNU General Public License.

Edit: This form might work for you:

        $whois -h whois.arin.net "US Senate"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting to see. Is there a Chinese or Russian government version of this?

</comment><comment><USER26> Amazing idea!</comment>


Unit testing elasticsearch with Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://faiq.me/testing-elasticsearch-node/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a quick blog post about a unit testing problem I faced at my internship at npmjs. I didn't find any sensible solutions online, so I decided to share this with y'all!</comment>


End of an Era: Sony Stopped Walkman Production - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/24/sony-cassette-walkman-_n_772973.html

<comment><USER2> phew.. my first thought was that they also stopped the mp3 player production :/</comment>


Why Peter Thiel Wants to Topple Gawker and Elect Donald Trump - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/06/peter-thiel.html <comment><USER2> I took nothing from that article. Why does he want trump?</comment>


We built the most accurate mortgage calculator - <AUTHOR> https://tryhomeflow.com/mortgage-calculator <comment><USER2> These numbers seem low. An $800k loan ($1m property w/ $200k down payment) @ 3.1% says the payment is 3,416.13/month. I was expected a number around $4,600. I think I know why it's low too.

What about home insurance? What about property taxes? You aren't getting a home loan without committing to these other mandatory costs. And DTI ratios include these things. DTI means principal + interest + taxes + insurance + (all other debt you have) must be <~40% of your income.

It's a calculator, for sure, but it's one that doesn't have meaningful defaults for these non-discretionary home expenses. I understand that, at a national level, generalizing things like property tax rates can be rough. But just have a reasonable default percentage, and let users adjust accordingly to their state.</comment>


Store of Value vs. Payment System - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/ <comment><USER2> Good explanation of how deflationary spiral starts.

From economic point of view, having concurrency that is good store of value is negative. Bitcoin economy discourages investment and any economic activity, it's purest form of speculative hoarding.

Perfect cryptocurrency would store value well for a short term (year or so and then would lose value rapidly. It would be good for transactions, moving assets and storing them for short term.</comment>


Show HN: ScreenTime, mac-app to sum-up your active computer-time - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/screen-time/id1276641852?mt=12 <comment><AUTHOR> EMail me for a promotional code.</comment>


Show HN: 8bars – Make Music in the Browser - <AUTHOR> https://8bars.app <comment><USER2> Nice work! One small suggestion to improve the UI would be to use cursor: col- resize on the edges of the notes to show they are draggable and change the length as the user drags to give visual feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :) I've implemented cursor: col-resize, but due to the hacky way the note grid works, it's kind of hard to implement visual feedback when dragging.

<comment><USER2> Wow quick turn around!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome. It seems to me the browser has eaten almost everything but music creation. That is too bad, because each year sounds seems more important in social networks.

</comment><comment><USER4> I suggest disabling autoplay when you open the link. I got startled pretty badly with the very loud and unexpected beeping sounds

<comment><AUTHOR> I think autoplay is important to draw people in, but I'll implement master volume control, and set it to 50% by default.

EDIT: Done.

EDIT2: I've disabled autoplay anyway, because on some browsers it doesn't work properly.

<comment><USER5> Until you click in Chrome, it's not allowing the playing of any sounds. At which point, it plays _everything that 's been queued up_. Even at 50% volume, dozens of sawtooth samples laid out on top of each other playing simultaneously is not pleasant.

I think you could easily prevent both by just having a button that takes up 1/4 the screen that says something like "Play Demo ". After that, you get your interaction event and people get their warning.

(That was meant to be a [https://emojipedia.org/musical- note/](https://emojipedia.org/musical-note/) in the Play Demo button but apparently HN strips these. Which makes sense!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow that sucks. I've disabled autoplay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> this is really good. this is the second project about javascript music I've seen on HN. I would love to learn more about music so I could take a shot at creating procedural music for games.

</comment><comment><USER7> I see a blank screen on iPhone. It's fine if you don't want to support all browsers but you should show a message if the browser isn't supported. For all I know it's still loading

Edit fixed! Works on iPhone now!

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you check the console, and tell me if there's some kind of error message?

And could you try checking the website without private browsing on? The website requires localStorage, and if that doesn't work, I guess the execution stops there, and it doesn't show anything. See: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12630396/localstorage- no...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12630396/localstorage-not-working- on-ipad-and-iphone)

<comment><USER8> > _Could you check the console, and tell me if there 's some kind of error > message?_

The error message → _"ReferenceError: Can 't find variable: AudioContext"_

You can't do this in some browsers → "c = new AudioContext" [1]

You need to wrap this API in a condition like so [2]

[1] [https://caniuse.com/#search=AudioContext](https://caniuse.com/#search=AudioContext)

[2] [https://stackoverflow.com/a/29373891](https://stackoverflow.com/a/29373891)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I implemented your suggestion. Hope it works now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks, a really neat tool to create some interesting music piece.

</comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for making and sharing, fun!</comment>


Mapbox Worldviews – Dynamically change disputed national borders - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mapbox.com/dynamically-change-disputed-national-borders-14c820cae923 <comment><USER2> This could be expanded to include Israel/Palestine disputed areas as well. Very interesting.</comment>


Can Microsoft Make You 'Bing'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/technology/with-the-bing-search-engine-microsoft-plays-the-underdog.html

<comment><USER2> When it provides a better service than the competition, I'll switch. Until then, its market share coincidentally more or less reflects my valuation of it in terms of effectiveness.

<comment><USER2> Interestingly (to me, anyway), I happened across this just 15 hours later: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2827703></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can we increase hospital bed/ventilator capacity in the US? - <AUTHOR> If China can build one in 10+ days why can't we accomplish similar feat? Probably won't happen here.<p>Let's discuss more about feasible solutions here in the US. Can ventilators somehow be shared safely so that we can effectively double the capacity? Are there alternatives to ventilators? <comment><USER2> This is why we shouldn't suspend building codes to quickly build hospitals: [https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/07/china/china-coronavirus- hotel...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/07/china/china-coronavirus-hotel- collapse/index.html)

Maybe other than increasing bed capacity, we should do a better job of teaching people how to reduce the chances of getting complications from things like the flu and giving them the resources and support to do so, this way we can reduce the need for hospital beds. I'm talking about the importance of bed rest, fluids, etc. and paid sick leave and access to video healthcare consultations. It is amazing to me how many people are out and about while ill.

In terms of increasing hospital beds- we can reuse some of the hotels that have temporarily shut for business, but more beds don't mean that we'll have enough health workers available to support the people in these beds. This brings us back to "reduce complications and don't fill the beds."

<comment><USER3> | This is why we shouldn't suspend building codes to quickly build hospitals

"The hotel was a seven-story steel structure, built in 2013 and converted to a hotel in 2018, according to Xinhua"

It doesn't appear to me that this has anything to do with building codes being suspended, but I do agree with you that they should not be.

<comment><USER2> That part of my comment refers to the well known issue that China often builds things quickly while taking shortcuts in building standards (either because they don't exist or due to corruption).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This gets a 4x extension of our ventilator supply: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16885402](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16885402)

We also have thousands of small manufacturers and hobbyists who are capable of building improvised ventilators should guidance be provided.

Since we are going into spring and summer months, we can use tents to set up extra space.

Also since schools are empty, they can provide additional spaces.

We have capacity, we just need leadership and direction.

<comment> Engineering-MD The problem with this (multiple patients on one generator) is it's far from ideal and hugely experimental. It's not really been done for prolonged periods or in large numbers. Patients would need to be matched for physiological variables, and it may reduce modifying these parameters dynamically.

<comment><USER5> at least they can try it. If 1400 patients show in an afternoon, this may seem like paradise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ventilators might be the issue, I'm sure the Army Engineers can do something pretty quick with field hospitals.

But then, they have to also be ready for war--just in case.

</comment><comment><USER6> All of those abandoned anchor stores you see in shopping centers could become hospitals.</comment>