Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/3932344/40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Geeks-Guide-to-Optimizing-Sleep

<comment><USER2> The sleep bits are (probably - don't know very much about the topic) ok, but once it gets to diet, it goes right into la-la-land. It is riddled with misinformation and the belief that a "raw food diet" fixes all. A raw food diet might make you lose weight, and it might get you food poisoning, but that's about it. For more information, I recommend C0nc0rdance's youtube videos on raw food.

For other clearly wrong, or wrongly interpreted information: While 70% of the population is lactose intolerant, that doesn't mean _you_ are. We do know that about 99% of the Chinese population is lactose intolerant (which proooobably skews the numbers a bit), yet, for example, only about 1% of Dutch people are lactose intolerant. Northern Europeans and other people from historically very dairy-rich cultures have a very high degree of lactose tolerance, and persistent lactase production (the enzyme that digests lactose and makes you lactose tolerant). Very interesting genetics topic :) Statistics will not say anything useful about whether you are likely to be lactose intolerant, but ethnicity will. Get tested if you are in doubt. It's a simple test. Just make sure you go to a qualified medical practitioner.

As for gluten insensitivity, this is called coeliac disease and is very serious. Thankfully, the highest estimate for prevalence is about 1%, not 15%. The anti-gluten brigade has been on it for years, but non-coeliac people can and should eat gluten. It's a good protein of high quality and makes your bread dough stick together. That's why it's hell trying to bake gluten-free bread or pizza dough.

Casein, a milk protein, is also not a bad protein. While there are many scare stories about casein (it being blamed for autism, cancer, et cetera), they don't hold up very well. Casein is a nice, slow-digesting protein with a very good quality, as any body builder who does the diet/protein thing will be able to tell you. Drink your milk if you can tolerate it, and eat more cheese :)

As for multiple sclerosis, we actually _don't know_ what causes it other than that there likely is a genetic component, but that other factors also interfere. For the actual, REAL long term effects of coeliac disease, see here: [http://celiacdisease.about.com/od/symptomsofceliacdisease/a/...](http://celiacdisease.about.com/od/symptomsofceliacdisease/a/complications.htm)

As for cortisol, your body regulates this itself. If you're stressed, stress down. But if your body doesn't regulate itself, you have a huge problem and need to see a doctor right away.

While "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" is very good advice, there's also another piece of advice that has been forgotten: "You are probably not sick, and your body can take care if it." Just eat a normal, healthy diet.

Man. That was long. Sorry about that, but I had to get some facts out.

<comment><USER3> In the U.S. at least, a normal, healthy diet is something of a contradiction. Michael Pollan wouldn't need to promote "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" if people were doing it already. I agree with you completely on your other points, but telling some people to eat a "normal" diet will be interpreted as, "eat out of fast food restaurants and freezer cases," because for many in the U.S., that _is_ a normal diet.

<comment><USER2> Oh, a "normal" diet varies a lot depending where you are. Myself, I'm in Norway, and the diet here is fairly healthy if somewhat short on vegetables (especially during the winter). I'm sure most other "normal" diets in the world are quite ok, as well. Might need some added vegetables, depending on where you are (the Dutch probably don't need any extra), but mostly, people who are able to afford normal amounts of food will eat better than one would expect given the media hype. They might want to cut down on the _amounts_ , and cut out the sugary drinks, but I think that's it.

<comment><USER4> Is kale available in Norway? According to most sources (for example, this simple comparison chart: www.wholefoodsmarket.com/pdfs/superfoods.pdf), kale is a super food, and in the US at least, grows well during the winter months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be interesting to read but I have to say it's just too infuriating what that Scribd crap does to the web. They ruin a perfectly good way of displaying documents just so they can "solve" the problem they created themselves.

That's just ridiculous and I will never ever again click on or upvote anything that has a scribd URL. Scribd truely shows the ugliest face of the ad funded web. It's innovation turned on its head. Ruin something just to extract some money from "fixing" it in a horrible way. It's pathetic and it's an intellectual disgrace.

<comment><USER6> The trouble with Scribd is it tries to legitimize PDF for browsing. We'd be better served by a tool that rescues the text and images from the boneheaded universal print-derived layout that assumes a very high resolution portrait display and pointlessly huge margins. Google has a lot of trouble with this, but bless them for trying.

<comment><USER7> I find PDFs a pleasure to read. They are better typeset, the lines aren't ridiculously long, the fonts look beautiful and the pages give me a feel of how much I've read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While on the face of it it may qualify as a 'Geek's guide', there seems to be a fair amount of woo.

"It is estimated that 70% of the population is lactose intolerant (dairy). 33% have yeast sensitivity. 15% have gluten sensitivity (wheat). And 35% have fructose or sugar sensitivity."

Really? Any references to back that up?

"Some raw-foodists say they need less sleep on a raw food diet compared to a cooked food diet."

Again no evidence, or references. And they would say that wouldn't they?

One source he does link to (on the page the above quote comes from) is Stanley Bass, a proponent of Natural Hygiene, and Orthopathy - very much in the realms of alternative medicine (if you look at the website linked to - <http://www.drbass.com/>, it is obvious quackery,and an assault on the eyes).

<comment><USER9> At least for the lactose intolerance, it completely depends on the population. It's fairly well known (and studied) that Asian populations have much much higher rates of lactose intolerance (thus the love of soy milk). The wiki article on lactose intolerance puts 75% of the global adult population at some degree of lactose intolerance.

Of course, if the majority of the people you know are white (European), then of course 70% looks fudged.

It's likely the same for many of the other stats, though I can't say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nothing worked until I started exercising. Quality of sleep greatly improved.

<comment><USER11> I tried running, but it didn't help at all. the only thing that has worked, so far, has been a strict meal/sleep schedule and melatonin.

<comment><USER12> Have you tried lifting weights? That could be the physical exertion you need.

<comment><USER7> Running is _way_ more exhausting than weight lifting. If you're not exhausted, run faster and longer. You can't do the same with weight lifting. You can get your arms tired, but your arms will give up long before you run out of energy.

<comment><USER13> If you're lifting weights with your arms, you're probably doing it wrong.

Try the olympics lifts: power cleans and snatches and squat cleans and snatches. Or their components: deadlifts, front squats, presses. Or back squats and thrusters. Do a bunch of those in rapid succession and your whole body will be much more tired than doing a 5k run, guaranteed.

<comment><USER7> This is not my experience. After a couple you won't be able to lift anymore, but you won't really be exhausted either. At least I can't lift any more just because my muscles fail. I don't regularly lift weights though, so perhaps if you're more experienced you can. That said, you don't need experience to get exhausted running (but the tendency of many people is to stop long before that point).

<comment><USER12> You're probably lifting too much weight, or leaving the gym too early. I know this isn't helpful, but you should be exhausted once you leave the gym.

<comment><USER7> How much weight should you lift? How long should you spend in the gym?

<comment><USER12> It's more complicated than a simple formula. If we're talking about olympic lifts (squats, deadlifts, clean & press), start with the bar and increase 5 lbs every day until you start hitting a limit.

Check out Mark Rippetoe's "Starting Strength" [1] for more info. Great program for anyone new to weightlifting.

[1] <http://startingstrength.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I haven't read the whole guide yet but on page 8 it mentions polyphasic sleep (with annotation that majority of people who try it fail). Isn't polyphasic considered a popular hoax? As far as I remember, mentioned in the presentation dr Wozniak actually believes it simply doesn't work. Also, I've read a few blogs of people who tried it and failed (some of them appeared on HN) and don't recall a single person that succeeded. Taking that into consideration it makes me feel sceptical towards this guide. Sure - some sleep patterns work for certain people and don't for other, but why include something that seems to work for noone?

<comment><USER15> I was polyphasic for about six months a number of years ago. My schedule was a fairly standard 6x20 minute naps (commonly called the Uberman schedule). After the initial (very, very difficult) adaptation period, I felt great nearly all of the time. I would get tired right before a nap, but by the end I didn't need an alarm to wake up after 20 minutes, and naps left me feeling completely refreshed and alert. I was in graduate school at the time, so my schedule was pretty flexible, and I had a mixture of cognitively demanding work (my research: a project in geophysical fluid dynamics) and less mentally demanding work (grading, family and home responsibilities). Again, after the adaptation period, I wasn't particularly cognitively impaired.

There is a lot of misinformation out on the web about polyphasic sleep, both by its proponents as well as its detractors. Some of the things that have been written (polyphasic sleepers only get REM, for example) are just false. One problem is that there isn't a very large body of peer reviewed literature on the subject; the canonical reference is a volume of conference proceedings from 1991 which can be hard to lay hands on. The fact that (a) adaptation takes a long time (on the order of weeks) and (b) the polyphasic schedule is incompatible with the way most people live their lives has made researching it difficult.

I'm currently involved in a polyphasic sleep experiment organized by the folks at Zeo. They asked for some volunteers to use their hardware to monitor our sleep as we either adapt to a polyphasic schedule or (for those already adapted) function on one. We're not following any kind of rigorous experimental protocol, so this isn't going to be publishable research, but it will at least provide us with some measured anecdotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One tip I don't see there is using supplments to aid sleep; I started taking zinc just before bedtime and found it helps me get to sleep better and feel more refreshed in the morning.

I take it as "ZMA", which is a blend of zinc/magnesium/vitamin B designed to help rest & recovery from physical activity, but the same sleep benefit comes from regular zinc tablets from the chemist.

<comment><USER17> +1 for this. It worked for me. Although (and there may have been other reasons for this), the effect fleeted with time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone have a download link to this?

I would greatly prefer to read this on my Nook instead, but it seems you can't download from Scribd without a subscription..

Thanks

<comment><USER19> [http://download.cnet.com/40-Sleep-Hacks-Geek-s-Guide-to- Opti...](http://download.cnet.com/40-Sleep-Hacks-Geek-s-Guide-to-Optimizing- Sleep/3000-2129_4-10864038.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Shorter answer: Eat fewer calories.

I have been having sleep problems for a decade, but any time I run a calorie deficit I sleep like a baby.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wanted to correct a mistake I noticed: Seth Roberts (as far as I know) has never documented trying a raw, whole foods diet. If you search his blog, you'll see that he has been tracking other things to see how they effect his sleep. Eating animal fat, standing on one leg, and sunlight are all examples.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=site:blog.sethroberts.net+sle...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site:blog.sethroberts.net+sleep)

edit: Maybe he's referring to this post? [http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2008/06/09/less-carbs- better...](http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2008/06/09/less-carbs-better- sleep/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Problem today is we spend a lot of time in front of back lit devices like smart phones, laptops/pcs & tv's before bed time. Therefore our melatonin levels stay low. I've been supplementing with melatonin tables to help with sleep before bed and I get an awesome night sleep.

Also things already covered like regular exercise (w/ weights), sleeping in a pitch dark room and consistent sleep & wake time work wonders.

I blogged about some of this last year here: [http://blog.ernestsemerda.com/2009/09/24/sleep-less-and- have...](http://blog.ernestsemerda.com/2009/09/24/sleep-less-and-have-more- energy/)

Enjoy. ~ Ernest

<comment><USER23> What helped me was f.lux <[http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/>](http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/>), a tool that adjusts the color temperature of your screens during the day, following the natural daylight pattern. It's available for Windows, OS X and Linux, and it's free, so I recommend trying it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> About a year ago I had lucid dreams on regular bases and they where amazing I have been trying to recreate the same experience again to no avail. All of a sudden my lucid dreams stopped about a year ago and not knowing that they where called I couldn't research them but now after reading this short ebook I finally know what they where and how I can induce them more consistently.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have an infant son and only sleep 1 - 4 hour stretches at a time. I feel like I am getting a higher quality sleep than I have in years. Also, when you have a reason that you cannot ignore (crying baby), it is much easier to leap out of bed and start doing things.

</comment><comment><USER26> I really need that :).

Too tired to read and apply them now, too insomniac to sleep.

</comment><comment><USER27> Has anyone tried the suggested 28 hour day (hack 3)? Does it work? What are the advantages/disadvantages?</comment>


As Groupon Preps IPO, Google And Startups Grab Merchants - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/11/02/as-groupon-preps-ipo-google-and-startups-grab-merchants/

<comment><USER2> I think that another perspective on "daily deals" is influencing user behavior for short term opportunities. Instead of deal that last for months, they sell excess capacity for tonight/tomorrow/this week.

This is already common with same day/rush tickets for live performances. <http://savored.com> seems to be doing this for restaurants, the experience is quite nice - no coupons. By only selling off excess you don't drive away current customers (a problem with groupon) and you can experiment one day/week at a time and don't have to worry about going out of business.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd argue that daily deals are nearly commoditized. If that's true, it's going to be an uphill battle for any new companies in the space. If it comes down to just brand names, my mom is going to pick "Google" over "Womply" any day of the week.

<comment><USER4> It just doesn't work like that, google has failed time and time again in new markets.

And this is especially true with the monopoly investigation sharks circling Google at the moment. Start putting these in the search results and there will definitely be trouble.</comment></comment>


Are Oklahoma Students Really This Dumb? Or Is Strategic Vision ... - <AUTHOR> http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/are-oklahoma-students-really-this-dumb.html

<comment><USER2> From the answers to the questions I am inclined to believe in the "made it all up" theory. But at a 99% confidence level I can reject the possibility that it was made up with a simple simulation of the type described.

How am I so sure? Well we're given all of the probabilities for all of the answers. We can therefore calculate what (assuming independence) the likely odds are of different numbers of correct answers. We're also given the number of students who got each number correct. Here is the result (I'll give the program that I used at the end):

      0 right: 46 vs 32.56
      1 right: 158 vs 147.61
      2 right: 246 vs 273.73
      3 right: 265 vs 278.71
      4 right: 177 vs 174.46
      5 right: 80 vs 70.58
      6 right: 22 vs 18.74
      7 right: 6 vs 3.23
      8 right: 0 vs 0.35
      9 right: 0 vs 0.02
      10 right: 0 vs 0.00

The argument is that we should be suspicious because those two sets of numbers are too similar. The tails are not heavy enough. Now I admit that graphically it does look close. But if you look, the tails _are_ heavy. Is that difference significant?

We can use a confidence testing to answer that. The null hypothesis is that the distribution comes from a simple simulation and should be close to the theoretical numbers that I just gave. The alternate hypothesis is that the tails should be heavier and the middle lower.

Let's look at the middle because it is easier to calculate. Theoretically 0.55244 of the test population should get one of those two numbers correct. It is claimed that 511/1000 did. How likely is that?

Well in the null hypothesis each student is an independent observation. Each observation is a 1 or 0 with average 0.55244. The variance of an observation is readily calculated and turns out to be 0.2472500464.

The number of people getting one of those two answers after 1000 observations is therefore approximately normal with average 552.44 and variance 1000 * 0.2472500464 = 247.2500464. The standard deviation is the square root of that, which is 15.724. That puts the observed value more than 2.63 standard deviations out. at a 99% confidence we can conclude that the numbers were NOT generated by a simple simulation of the type described.

For the curious, here is how I calculated the theoretical distribution of answers:

      #! /usr/bin/perl -w
      use strict;
      use Math::Polynomial;

      my $ans = 1;

      # Number from the % of students who got each question right.
      for my $x (qw(.28 .26 .27 .1 .14 .61 .43 .11 .23 .29)) {
        $ans *= Math::Polynomial->new(1-$x, $x);
      }

      print "$ans\n";

      __END__

      (5.295902595984e-07 x^10 + 2.07154949414e-05 x^9 +
      0.000345419801607472 x^8 + 0.00322944050567802 x^7 +
      0.0187445906666514 x^6 + 0.0705826597827996 x^5 +
      0.174464060957845 x^4 + 0.278709766012616 x^3 +
      0.273731283943492 x^2 + 0.147609870020204 x +
      0.0325616632239042)

<comment><USER3> Assuming the people faking these sort of numbers aren't complete morons they'll know that this sort of naive statistical test is the first thing people will try. Thus they'll probably run their simulation and then manually poke a few of the numbers to make sure that this sort of test fails.

Also If they're slightly smarter still they'll realize that the chance of getting a question right or wrong is not independent. You're chance of someone getting questions 5-10 right is probably quite closely correlated to whether or not they got questions 1-4 right.

Anyway my basic point is that assuming the person in charge of writing a simulation didn't sleep through all of statistics 101 it is quite trivial to write a simple simulation that won't be detected by simple statistical analysis.

<comment><USER2> You're overestimating them. The final digit analysis that broke this whole story is something that only catches numbers being made up by hand. If they rolled a die to randomize things, they wouldn't have left an obvious pattern like that.

Given that, it was reasonable to investigate the obvious possibility first for this case. Particularly since there was a suggestion that they had made up the set of numbers with such a simulation.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'm guilty of overestimating them, but I always find it hard to believe that people who would go through the trouble of faking these sort of things can be so monumentally stupid. These people work with polling and statistics, they must know about all of these tests. It cannot be that hard to use the knowledge to write a randomizer which produces reasonable results...maybe that's a good idea for a startup.

<comment><USER4> _These people work with polling and statistics_

Well, current evidence seems to suggest that maybe they don't, actually, work with polling and statistics...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An analysis of the post: [http://blog.smellthedata.com/2009/09/analysis-of- pollster-fr...](http://blog.smellthedata.com/2009/09/analysis-of-pollster- fraud-and-oklahoma.html)

<comment><USER6> Both posts are very well thought out. I always mistrust polls and any statistics that don't publish details of their methodology and raw data.

Sometime back I spent some involuntary time in the army. We had to take a number of tests. I answered most of them randomly.

On the IQ test, I really tried h a r d to get all the questions wrong, in the vain that they will think I was an idiot and they let me go (they never did and no-one ever gave me a strange look).

I sympathize with those Oklahoma kids and understand that there many ways to tell a grown-up a 'fuck you' ;)

<comment><USER5> As an Oklahoman high-schooler, I think the "they made the whole thing up" hypothesis is way more likely. Either that or they got a _really_ unrepresentative sample. I know that at least half of my 2000 student school could have made at least a 6 on that quiz. Not too many people here actively try to buck the system, sadly.

<comment><USER7> I tend to agree, though my feelings fall more on getting student buy-in. Without some real outcome that matters (a grade, or something similar) what's to insure a reliable sample. Assuming things haven't changed since I was in high school, I'm pretty sure we'd have gone out of our way to skew the test purposely with outrageously wrong answers...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "communist and republican" ... lol those kids got brainwashed!

<comment><USER9> The question is a bit of an affront to one's intelligence, so it makes sense to pick the silly answer ;)

<comment><USER3> I remember when I was in high school and they where doing some sort of poll about the upcoming nation election at several school. Somehow word started to spread around that we should all 'vote' for the Communists, so we did.

A few days later there was an article in the local newspaper about a disturbing trend showing the over 20% of 16-18 year olds would have voted communist and what this might mean for the next election when all these kids have the right to vote. We found the whole thing highly amusing.</comment></comment></comment>


The attack on angel financing - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/03/congress_attack_on_angel_financing.html

<comment><USER2> So I hope someone is explaining this to the you-know-what-hat Senator Dodd. Remember to speak slowly.</comment>


Bitcoin Miners Flock to New York's Remote Corners, but Get Chilly Reception - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/nyregion/bitcoin-mining-new-york-electricity.html <comment><USER2> >Mr. Recny asked why an enterprise that required only a few people to run it should be able to drive up the operating costs of a company that employed about 500.

Why should an enterprise that requires only about 500 people to run it be able to drive up the operating costs of a company that employed about 2,000? and other such logic from "the only justified subsidy is my subsidy" camp.

>The concerns are part of a broader battle over the enormous carbon footprint of Bitcoin mining, which on a global scale uses as much energy as a medium- sized country.

>But the iconic American corporations that abandoned plants in Massena left behind the precious resource that drew them here in the first place: abundant, cheap electricity flowing from a dam in the St. Lawrence River.

So the source of the power a hydroelectric dam. That's about as low of GHG per kWh as you're going to get. "Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas". If they ban these miners, like was done in some Canadian provinces, they'll potentially move to an area with higher GHG per kWh. Since mining is more location agnostic than other production services, it's natural that it be located in economically remote but low-GHG, power/energy rich locations.

<comment><USER3> The real irony here is that the Bitcoin/Ethereum miners are setting up hardware which runs software designed to maximize inefficiency for the sake of maintaining a system designed for money laundering and tax evasion.

Rather than use their equipment for work that's useful to humanity like Folding@Home or BOINC these mining operations are running what amounts to a foundry of space heaters trying to compute a lottery number in return for poker chips at a speculative casino.

<comment><USER4> There's a real need for a currency that's actually backed by something real, given the amount of silly money sloshing around the system these days

Linking a currency to wasted energy isn't great, but what solution would you put forward? A few countries out there have tried to go back to gold or use their oil but it doesn't end well for them

<comment><USER5> > backed by something real

Which is why USD backed up by the worlds strongest economy are used for vastly more international transactions than all cripto coins combined. Coins have nothing but belief in their value backing them up and are thus extremely unstable.

At the end of the day people need to pay taxes and debts and that's what gives nation states currency value. As long as the nation does not go on a long term printing spree things stabilize.

<comment><USER6> > Which is why USD backed up by the worlds strongest economy are used for > vastly more international transactions than all cripto coins combined.

In what sense do you believe USD to be 'backed' by the US economy?

<comment><USER5> Economic transactions create a tax debt which creates demand for currency to pay the government. Sell stock, car, or some Twinkies, even in a different currency, and they get a cut.

Indirectly, messing with your currency risks economic harm creating a huge incentive for governments not to do that while things are going well.

<comment><USER6> > Economic transactions create a tax debt which creates demand for currency to > pay the government. Sell stock, car, or some Twinkies, even in a different > currency, and they get a cut.

That is absolutely correct. But nowhere does it demand that you conduct these transactions in USD. USD ends up getting used because it's convenient, which is because people have to pay their tax debts at the end of the year. However, that is a problem that can be trivially solved by software now, especially as society becomes more and more cashless.

As long as the US government accepts payment for taxes in USD, there will always be some demand for it. However, there is nothing actually stopping people from using other currencies for their normal transactions, which would substantially decrease demand for USD, and thereby reduce its value.

There is no sense in which the US government 'backs' dollars, except insofar as they are incentivized not to do anything to actively destroy them.

<comment><USER5> The need to pay US taxes in USD is not a software problem it's a risk mitigation problem. If you accept pesos/whatever for your car and the peso crashed you might owe more in taxes than you where paid _and_ even if you do the transaction today you still need to buy some USD with pesos to put aside for taxes.

So, if by 'some' you mean multiple trillions of dollars of demand every year then ok. But, that's rather trivializes what a trillion dollars means.

Which is why I am saying the economy backs the USD not the government.

<comment><USER6> > The need to pay US taxes in USD is not a software problem it's a risk > mitigation problem. If you accept pesos/whatever for your car and the peso > crashed you might owe more in taxes than you where paid and even if you do > the transaction today you still need to buy some USD with pesos to put aside > for taxes.

True, though that's simple enough to hedge.

> So, if by 'some' you mean multiple trillions of dollars of demand every year > then ok. But, that's rather trivializes what a trillion dollars means.

Absolute numbers don't matter, relative ones do. The demand may go to trillions, but that would be down from tens of trillions.

<comment><USER5> Absolute numbers create bounds. USD can't drop to 1/100th of it's current value without huge shifts as people would need to pay 100x as many USD in taxes driving up demand for USD. Now, their is slack in the system, but that's a good thing as it provides price signals and feedback loops.

Even record setting sustained inflation of say 2% per month in the middle of some horrific economic issues would still be a bastion of stability relative to many currency's throughout history. So, as long as the economy stays steady and the USG does not do something monumentally stupid the US economy really does back the USD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I fully understand this reaction. Crypo is delivering on none of it's promises and leaving an ugly mark on the production side. Transactions are way too slow for retail, decentralization is a joke because the largest mining pools are manipulating the supply with less transparency than national currencies, the value is too volatile to entice people to use it for anything other than speculation, and it is literally the most environmentally destructive modern technology at the moment. If miners moved into my town you bet my ass I would be at town hall telling them to fuck off.

<comment><USER8> If your area has cheap electricity, chances are miners are already there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "all seeking to capitalize on the soaring value of digital currencies, like Bitcoin"

Given the trend the last few months, I'm not sure "soaring" is the adjective I'd choose...

<comment> fake-name It's soaring, just in a ballistic arc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This area of Northern New York is very economically depressed, and it's interesting to see some of the businesses that set up shop there, or set up their supply chains to draw from that region. They often promise lots of jobs, but few deliver.

Chobani was one of the few that has helped the economy (through support for the local dairy industry, see [https://magicvalley.com/news/local/chobani-not- a-windfall-fo...](https://magicvalley.com/news/local/chobani-not-a-windfall- for-new-york-dairymen/article_28076a32-b2c1-11e1-abba-0019bb2963f4.html)) but others such as the large-scale wind farms across the region use hundreds of workers from elsewhere to build and maintain the turbines, and don't have many permanent local jobs ([http://northcountrynow.com/news/hopkinton-wind- advisory-boar...](http://northcountrynow.com/news/hopkinton-wind-advisory- board-wont-expand-areas-where-generators-can-be-built-0196294))

The New York Times should have dug into the claims from the Bitcoin miners about job creation ("Coinmint told state officials it would eventually employ 150 people in Massena") as it looks like (based on the descriptions of Coinmint's existing ops) there are only a few people needed to manage what they already have, they are not committing to any large-scale building projects, and much of the mining gear is imported.

Local news orgs have more reporting about the bitcoin miners and the impact on the region:

[http://northcountrynow.com/business/blockchain-industries- pu...](http://northcountrynow.com/business/blockchain-industries-pulling-out- massena-nypa-moratorium-puts-coinmint-plans-jeopardy)

[http://www.northcountrynow.com/letters/snake-oil-alert- block...](http://www.northcountrynow.com/letters/snake-oil-alert-blockchain- industries-says-massena-resident-0230614)

Incidentally, this area is quite beautiful and cheap to live and run a business in. In many of these small cities you can buy a really nice house for $100,000-$200,000. It's about two hours south of Ottawa, a bit further to Montreal and Syracuse, and includes the northern part of the Adirondacks as well as the St. Lawrence River, Lake Ontario, and Lake Champlain region. The college town of St. Lawrence University is Canton, located in St. Lawrence county, and there are state colleges in Potsdam and Plattsburgh. A few cities have set up economic development zones and incentives for companies to relocate there including Ogdensburg, which sits next to one of the bridges to Canada, and I believe Watertown NY, as well.

<comment><USER11> I grew up in that neck of the woods. Drove through aroumd 2012. It very much is economically depressed but not THAT depressed. It feels just, cozy and small townish.

Lovely piece of Americana, imo

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there any work being done to make Bitcoin not consume all that energy?

It's hard to support when it's so wasteful of a critical resource.

Are they trying to go proof of stake?

<comment><USER13> Bitcoin is _not_ trying to go proof of stake because proof of work is the most secure consensus algorithm that exists. Proof of stake has some lingering unsolved problems, search for "nothing at stake problem" and "long range attack."

All the energy consumed by bitcoin is a feature, not a bug. The only way to defeat the immutability of the bitcoin blockchain and do naughty things would be to expend _more_ energy than is currently being used (or create a more effecient miner, mass produce it, set up mining farms, all without anybody finding out).

<comment><USER12> If that's the case, I'm not into it. It's not sustainable. What an incredible waste of resources.

And presumably the energy cost correlates to the usage of the currency?

How can it possibly become anything like widely used if it's so pricey?

(Come to think of it, one way is the lightning network. Which doesn't use the blockchain for almost everything: [https://lightning.network/](https://lightning.network/))

<comment><USER13> So by your metric the global banking industry, which uses several orders of magnitude more electricity than the bitcoin network, also isn't sustainable.

A single bitcoin may be pricey, but fortunately there are eight decimal places after that first coin, enabling users to spend however much or however little they want.

You're right about the lightning network, it stands to revolutionize the bitcoin network by providing an instantaneous zero-confirmation payment layer on top of the bitcoin blockchain. Critically, though, it wouldn't work at all without the security provided by all that "wasted" electricity. Think of the lightning network like the HTTP protocol layer resting on top of the TCP/IP communication layer. HTTP wouldn't work without TCP/IP and TCP/IP wouldn't be nearly as useful without the myriad of protocol layers which it enables. This is still early times for bitcoin, and you ain't seen nothin' yet.

<comment><USER12> The global banking system is used by drastically more people than Bitcoin.

And I expect the transactions per person of the global banking system is orders of magnitude higher.

Energy use per transaction for Bitcoin seems much, much higher, but I don't have numbers obviously.

But hopefully lightning helps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Love watching people cry about bitcoin miners increasing the overall efficacy of electricity use.

If you didn't want people moving in and using your cheap electricity, you shouldn't have made it so cheap! Price stabilization in action.

<comment><USER14> If you walked into Starbucks every day and took most of the sugar packets so that they're aren't enough for all the other customers, proclaiming "they should've charged $0.10 each!" when caught would probably not earn you much sympathy from the regular customers.

<comment><USER13> That would be a good analogy if there were government price controls on sugar packets at Starbucks. Or if electricity was free. As it stands, it's a pretty poor analogy.</comment></comment></comment>


Ageism in silicon valley: a foreign perspective - <AUTHOR> http://karaten.posterous.com/ageism-in-silicon-valley-a-foreign-perspectiv

<comment> T-R In Japan there's a combination of things that support hiring discrimination against anyone who hasn't just graduated from college, spanning all fields.

The RECRUIT monopoly has pushed a significant amount of hiring into large recruiting events which commoditize applicants with unified application forms and an overemphasis on testing and school names (students have to start looking for jobs in their sophomore year). Job applications also require photographs.

There are also several incentives not to leave a job, such as the general assumption (read: requirement) by other companies and institutions of lifetime employment (e.g., my Gym doesn't have a way for someone to join who isn't employed or a student, and upon changing jobs, I lost my housing contract, even though I was paying for it - granted, I'm a foreigner). It's harder to leave a job, in a culture that's generally considered pretty risk-averse, and so companies are less willing to hire those who have. Moreover, there are many taiiku-kei companies, where work and social life are intertwined, which would likely favor hiring fresh out of college.

Certainly many companies don't discriminate by age, but there's a whole lot more in place to support a company that does. I'd imagine there'd be a good deal of value in reaching out to an untapped labor market in either location.

</comment><comment><USER2> SEs wrote all code that functioned at my employer, though it is true that management thought this a great waste of resources. I listened to an older SE explaining the grand scheme to make us a software firm without anyone programming in house.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's age got to do with it? American corporate software development is just as broken. Even the corporate ladder isn't _that_ different. Programmers either move up as they age or are considered losers.

The difference is that the US has that dysfunctional system, but it also has a highly innovative system: startups and companies run something like startups (Apple, Google, Facebook, etc).

Japan simply doesn't have a startup ecosystem. Essentially no other country does.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. The key factor is, there is no-one who is a manager in a technical organization who doesn't consider management to be "better" than hands-on technical work - it's not as if there are pressgangs of board members roaming the halls, to move into management, you have to _want_ to.

Now obviously these people consider themselves to be "successful", after all, they got promoted didn't they? So it follows logically that anyone with the same number of years of experience who isn't a manager must be "unsuccessful" and who wants to hire an unsuccessful person?

Some companies talk about creating a "technical" career track but in my experience that's never more than lip service, handing out a few job titles like "senior this" and "principal that".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with "age" is really a problem of attitude. We'll be crippling ourselves if we go by this proxy variable of age instead of looking at the real problem, because there are plenty of people under 30 who are a lot more cynical about new tech (e.g. JSON, NoSQL, advanced/mature FPs) than people a decade older than them.

Will there be some BS in the new tech? Sure, but that's because it's new. Too often, some wise-ass with a pretty degree or a major accomplishment at an early age thinks that they'd already seen everything under the sun.

</comment><comment> T-R I think it's important to note, though, that ageism in Japanese recruiting isn't restricted to Programming by any stretch of the imagination. Additionally, there seems to be a view of Programming as more of a vocational field here - likely related to the small number of schools with 4 year Computer Science programs. I think it's kind of apples-to-oranges, but definitely some food for thought.

<comment><USER6> As far as I know, every engineering school in Japan has a 情報工学 (Information Engineering) program which is equivalent to Computer Science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anecdotally, I saw a neat open-source cryptocurrency system that come from Japan. From hearsay, I heard he is a cryptography researcher since he published a nice professional looking technical paper on his system. Other than that, nobody knows who he really is.

Other than that, I used the Ruby programming language. There's not much else that I knew come from Japan in software. If they did come out though, they are pretty awesome.

<comment><USER2> _There's not much else that I knew come from Japan in software._

If you routinely play video games, use consumer electronics, or travel via automobiles, odds are quite good you have used Japanese software recently. Don't worry: you are hardly the only person who forgets to count those.

The other category of software Japan is big in is Big Freaking Enterprise backoffice ware, which is overwhelmingly sold to Big Freaking Japanese Enterprises and a few foreign customers who have to interoperate closely with them. (Totally hypothetically speaking, imagine you had a large automobile manufacturer whose supply chain could practically apply for membership to the United Nations. Their backend software might have significant uptake among companies who enjoy pleasing their #1 customer.)

We're really, really behind the US curve in the consumer web space, though. (Working on it!)

<comment><USER4> The article says, embedded software is completely different.

<comment><USER8> And it is, for some reason, maybe higher barrier to entrance, embedded seems to foster an older alumni it is also far more rewarding to those who stay on a technical tract.

The way I see it, in pure play software dev, it up or out or freelance (which is really management but you get to sling some code). I chose the latter after doing a stint in embedded and later executive management. The problem with embedded is that there just are not a lot of opportunities in the states outside of some concentrated areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> thanks for all the career advice HN... but i'm finding this discussion really depressing and attitudes really off-putting.

i really really respect you guys but i for one am coding until my eyes fall out of my head... social constructs be damned.

<comment><USER10> I think the point of this & related threads is simply to make people aware of the attitudes defacto policies that exist, so you can be aware of them if your life choice is to remain what is euphemistically called an "individual contributor" into your middle and later years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the article: "On[e] exception [to non-age discrimination in silicon valley?] is YC, but PG did make clear about the chance of anybody above 35 in one of his essays."

Does anyone know which essay this refers to? A quick google search only brought up [1] which says: "Paul [...] said that while this [young grads fresh out of college] was more common, they fund the full age spectrum."

[1] <http://www.cloudave.com/link/at-age-35-mozart-was-dead>

<comment><USER12> <http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html>

      The other cutoff, 38, has a lot more play in it. One
      reason I put it there is that I don't think many people
      have the physical stamina much past that age. I used to
      work till 2:00 or 3:00 AM every night, seven days a week.
      I don't know if I could do that now.

      Also, startups are a big risk financially. If you try
      something that blows up and leaves you broke at 26, big
      deal; a lot of 26 year olds are broke. By 38 you can't
      take so many risks-- especially if you have kids.

<comment> loup-vaillant That seems to imply that young people are so awesome that they can be more productive by working crazy long hours (compared to the standard 40 hours work-week).

Somehow, I doubt it. I understand his point, but when I see studies[1] that says that on average, working as little 60 hours a week is less efficient than 40 hours a week on the (not so) long term, I don't see how anyone can be more efficient by working even _more_ than that. Even if they are still young and healthy. Even if they are driven like only messiahs have any right to be.

[1]: [http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity- pres...](http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity- presentation.html)

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure Sir Ranulph Fiennes says in one of his books that he preferred candidates for his expeditions who were in their 30s as he found them a lot mentally tougher than younger folks.

I suspect he knows a lot more about how people work under extremes of pressure than most.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranulph_Fiennes>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I suppose all IT companies should be registered as <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership></comment>


List of countries by tax rates - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates <comment><USER2> Wikipedia article oversimplifies labour taxation. It consists mostly of marginal tax rate and doesn't take into account tax breaks, tax-free allowance, etc. If you take that into account the picture is different.

I find OECD report on average labour taxation the best comparison, though limited to fewer countries: [http://www.oecd.org/ctp/tax-policy/taxing-wages- tax-burden-t...](http://www.oecd.org/ctp/tax-policy/taxing-wages-tax-burden- trends-latest-year.htm)

Also keep in mind in most developed countries there are major differences between average effective tax rate paid by single earners and family with dependents.

<comment><USER3> It's almost impossible to compare any single piece of a tax system in isolation without taking into account the cost of the living, market access and the tax system as a whole.

It may be better to look at government spending in proportion to the GDP and ignore how the government actually got this money. Even when the government lends money -- that's just money your grandchildren will have to pay back through taxes (with interest).

The gov-spending/GDP ratio should be a better indicator of the 'tax' climate.

But even that, could be very misleading. If you need a lot of high educated staff, you would prefer a government that spends that money on free high quality class-free education. If you are an oil company, you might actually prefer that money being spend on a war machine.

<comment><USER4> Of course, Wikipedia also has a list of countries by government spending and tax revenue as percentage of GDP: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_perce...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_percentage_of_GDP).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I would actually appreciate was a source that would tell me the "real" taxes paid at every level. I don't know if one exists, but it would be a really interesting comparison.

I.e.: A source giving real percentage of taxes paid for each anual income. Why: because these here at the maximum taxes. These are pretty accurate for lower income people since they don't have many ways to avios paying taxes, but when you get to the very rich the number changes completely, they use a number of loopholes to avoid paying their taxes.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure what to think of this information. It shows maximum tax rates, but the more useful figure is effective tax rates.

</comment><comment><USER7> I doubt many people in the US pay the maximum tax rate listed here. I had no idea it was so high.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of tax payers are in each bucket for the countries that have large ranges.

<comment><USER8> More than you would think. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivity_in_United_States...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivity_in_United_States_income_tax)

I'm always surprised to see how just how much misinformation and misconceptions there are in regards to the US tax system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's great example how to show numeric data and tell nothing about the world. In list like this I would expected weighted-average rate or at least median (how much typical person pays).

</comment><comment><USER10> North Korea has surprisingly low tax rates for a communist country. I suppose if all the companies are owned by the state, they can just decrease salaries instead.

<comment><USER11> Today's North Korea doesn't have much to do with communism. It's a monarchy or a hereditary dictatorship or "Fascism meets Micromanagement". The difference is mostly in the distribution of power: while the individual is highly restricted in both systems, in communism it's your peers that are supposed to make your life miserable, not the supreme leader.

It's even more pronounced with Russia and China (and nowadays Turkey, with Hungarian aspirations to join the club): Fiercely capitalistic economies* in an almost complete absence of other civil liberties.

For NK, I doubt that a comparison makes any sense, considering how far removed it is from other countries' societies. How do you account for widespread forced labor? What's the real value of any income they get if part of it is in quotas for food, and most prices are subject to change at a moments notice when PJ thinks it's a good idea or toilet paper reserves are running dry?

*as long as it doesn't come into contact with political realm, and sometimes obscured by an additional kleptocratic layer.</comment></comment>


Atlassian SourceTree 1.8 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Don't. Just don't.

It looks ugly as hell, and it has no git flow toolbar button, because git flow is broken.

<comment><USER2> As mentioned elsewhere, there are some known issues; the team are looking into fixes. In the meantime if you're hit with any issues it appears a downgrade is a reasonable workaround. Links to known-good versions:

[http://downloads.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree/SourceTre...](http://downloads.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree/SourceTre..).

[https://downloads.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree/windows/...](https://downloads.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree/windows/..).

(Disclaimer; I'm Atlassian employee, although not on Sourcetree so I don't have any special insight.)</comment></comment>


Learn to build serverless apps by competing in cloud tank warfare - <AUTHOR> https://serverless.camp/ <comment><USER2> 'serverless' apps are not really 'serverless'. You are just allowing another company to run the actual server infrastructure.

While this might be good for large companies, it's dangerous for startups. Someone else has complete control over the infrastructure of your business and it not only makes it difficult for you to make simple changes that could save you money, but it's very expensive compared to traditional servers that you run yourself.

I run all of my own servers and it would cost me 10X to run it on AWS.

Too many startups outsource their infrastructure or create a business that relies completely on another business platform like Twitter/Facebook and then get squashed when things change or the platform doesn't want you to have too much power.

The book called 'Hatching Twitter' shows exactly this mindset: 3rd party API users were cut-off because the execs at Twitter realized that only a few of the 3rd party apps together had enough of a user base to compete with Twitter.

Which is why all of these services follow the same handbook: have generous access to the API, after this brings in and builds the user base, Cut-off access and severely limit the API (to prevent users from leaving).

One other step is charging so much money for the API access that it bankrupts most of these businesses and then launch a competing app.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're missing a huge point there in terms of time to market and stuff an organisation wants to deal with. No matter how good I get at server ops, Amazon will always be way better than me. They probably have patents on how to cool data centres. A small company, like mine, has to choose its battles if it's to launch products quickly, and competing in server maintenance isn't what will make those products better.

And sure, I can self-host something and it's going to be cheaper if you just measure the cost of hardware. but count in the cost of humans maintaining that, patching the OS, dealing with security, working the network etc. You might be particularly good at that (and if you're running all your stuff you probably are), but I'm not. And I don't want to be. I want to focus on building stuff that I care about. So paying a bit more for server hosting works out a lot cheaper than managing all that myself, as I can focus on other things.

On the whole serverless thing - yes, it's a buzzword, but people tend to look at it from a technical perspective which is all wrong. the financial side is what matters. the tech isn't really that exciting there -- sure, there's a lot of new tech like containers, but the major change is that I'm only paying for stuff when it does something useful, instead of paying for servers to sit idle. But that's a topic for a completely different discussion. I published some of my thoughts on it here: [https://gojko.net/2016/08/27/serverless.html](https://gojko.net/2016/08/27/serverless.html)

<comment><USER2> like I said, it's all about control. It gives a company like Amazon too much control over your business..especially when it comes to price.

Most hosting providers take care of any hardware issues and open source has come a long way. It's not that difficult to manage and scale a medium-traffic website.

In all likelihood, you will never need the level of scaling Amazon provides and are overpaying for the service.

I've been running web businesses for over a decade and have seen many companies fold because they give too much control to another business.</comment></comment></comment>


Fake News Is Consumed By Just 10% of Americans - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1170283/fake-news-is-consumed-by-just-10-of-americans/ <comment><USER2> I'm assuming it's still the same 10% that used to go buy their fake news from grocery store checkout stands.</comment>


TV vs. The Internet: Who Will Win? - <AUTHOR> http://nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/oct/08/tv-vs-internet-who-will-win/ <comment><USER2> Internet or Cable is just the delivery model.

TV is still TV irrelevant of whether the screen is your monitor or a Smart TV... Delivery owners are also the content owners, and they playing hardball against players such as Netflix. If you own the premium content you're not going to give it away. People will follow where the premium content lives, this is why Netflix etc have had to produce content.

I wrote about this stuff about a year ago across 4 posts -[http://www.hoista.net/post/100055701637/pt-4-ad-platforms- an...](http://www.hoista.net/post/100055701637/pt-4-ad-platforms-and-content- distribution) [http://www.hoista.net/post/99371777282/pt-3-content- packagin...](http://www.hoista.net/post/99371777282/pt-3-content-packaging- digital-disruption-in-tv)

[http://www.hoista.net/post/97194595897/pt-2-content- creation...](http://www.hoista.net/post/97194595897/pt-2-content-creation- digital-disruption-in-tv) [http://www.hoista.net/post/95719699857/digital- disruption-in...](http://www.hoista.net/post/95719699857/digital-disruption- in-tv-video-and-media-and-the)

</comment><comment><USER3> The internet. Really.

It's like asking "Horse vs Car: who will win?". People in 1900 may have said "horse, of course", but we know the real answer, given time.

Oh, and by the way, 18-24 demographic is watching less and less tv...

<comment><USER4> "Cord-cutting" has moved past Bleeding Edge and Early Adopters. Currently, Late Adopters are cutting their cable cords, and soon the Long Tail will be the only cable TV market.

<comment><USER5> My son is 21 and only has cable at the apartment.

<comment><USER6> I'm 28 and haven't had an antenna plugged into my TV since moving out of home, what's your point?

<comment><USER5> I meant to type Internet, but said cable. My point was actually supportive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ther internet is a _looong_ way from winning.

When I turn on my cable TV, there is always something playing - instantly. When I change the channel, whatever is on the other channel is now playing - instantly. My TV always works - it never buffers, shows glitchy video, or requires a page refresh (or god forbid a reboot).

I've been watching TV on the internet for 5+ years, and it still hasn't overcome these basic quality issues. Until it does, there's no way that it will put a real dent in cable/satellite usage.

<comment><USER8> That facilitates people who want to watch _anything_ right now and don't care what it is. But for people for whom consuming video content is just one of the things they do with their free time and who choose what to watch ahead of time, those are not benefits.

Not being suitable for "couch potato" viewers isn't a competitive disadvantage. People under 30 don't watch TV conventionally much any more, and as old people ... ahem ... go away, fewer and fewer people will care about conventional television.

<comment><USER9> I notice a very distinct difference there between my son and I. I will say "let's turn on the TV". He'll say "I want to watch X".

The concept of just switching on the TV and zapping is something that just does not exist for him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For clarity, stating the difference between the two is beneficial. "TV" is a single-channel system, in that the user has a single input to control their output: which channel. 1:1. "The Internet" has a much broader range of control, simply by the mechanism of processing input before sending output. No longer is input:output 1:1.

Honestly, I'm disappointed this even made it to the front page. "who will win" TV vs internet is no longer a legitimate or interesting question. Unless we're having a business or politics discussion about industries lobbying their way to success, there's is no room for rational disagreement about who will win. The internet will continue to cannibalize TV from the bottom up (or the top down if you want to go by ratings).

I had a Diamond Rio pmp300 32MB mp3 player in 1998. An iPod didn't come out for 3 years. An iPhone didn't come out for 9 years. Even though the Diamond only held 8 songs, I knew the SECOND I hit play that every other mobile audio technology was dead. It was just a matter of time.

I think sometimes - subconsciously - we believe too much in the efficient market - that if we see an opportunity for arbitrage that WE must be wrong - the market must have already accounted for it. But that's just how things work... sometimes very obviously correct concepts take awhile to actually take hold.

TV already lost. It will just take the world a few years to realize it.

<comment><USER11> _TV already lost. It will just take the world a few years to realize it._

This remainds me of Clay Shirky and his "the future of print remains what?"

[https://medium.com/@cshirky/last- call-c682f6471c70](https://medium.com/@cshirky/last-call-c682f6471c70)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not long ago I found a quiz which purported to measure how much of a "millenial" the test taker was, ultimately it boiled down to three main characteristics of "millenials", one of which was whether or not they watch TV. Younger people just don't watch TV conventionally much any longer. They may watch TV shows, but they do so using computing devices and the internet, not cable or broadcasts. The internet will only get better for that, and people will increasingly be abandoning conventional TV service.

More so when you consider that more and more of the highest quality and most popular video content has shifted away from the traditional model of regularly aired shows and schedule based content consumption to more plot driven content that is designed more for on-demand viewing. The shows people are watching the most and talking about the most are increasingly of the type that have fewer episodes per "season" and are more story driven. And many of the most popular shows today are only available online (House of Cards, Daredevil, House of Cards, Narcos, Sense8, etc.)

A lot of teens and younger folks aren't even watching traditional television style content. They're watching "streamers" and other video content on youtube. As they get older they may start watching more episodic content but I doubt they'll magically morph into traditional couch potatoes. That era is, I think, firmly in the past.

</comment><comment><USER12> Once I found Edonkey2000 and then BitTorrent way back in the day (2003) I started watching less Cable and TV in general.

Though it took a ton of time to download content back then....content I would organize and really never watch a lot of. That got old after awhile and then YouTube and the other streaming sites came online. THe best one was Justin.TV.... marathons of your favorite shows running 24/7.. whenever you wanted to watch. There are some sites still online now, but nothing with same catalog Justin.TV allowed on their site via the DMCA.

Either way and as to many here Cable TV is the dodo bird and going that way in the next five or so years for all demographics!

</comment><comment><USER13> I can no longer tolerate TV. Using the Internet has made me a control freak. Even with buffering etc, the TV user interface is primitive.

</comment><comment><USER14> In the past month I started watching the programs Difficult People & You're the Worst. One made for Hulu, the other for FX. And to be perfectly honest if I was blind taste testing and had to peg which one was which, it be a shot in the dark. Also, haven't cable boxes just been really crappy computers for years?

</comment><comment><USER15> Kidding right? I stopped watching TV 8 years ago. Who wants to make an appointment to watch a show? Tried cable for a few days because Cablevision insisted... canceled it two days later.

<comment><USER16> You should try a DVR. They're magic once you get used to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This synopsis of Michael Wolff's book is so far off the mark, it seems Mr. Weisberg missed the point. I found the book to be far more nuanced, intelligent and provocative than the Mr. Weisberg would have you believe. And I'm someone who's heavily invested in the idea that the eponymous Internet, in terms of the battle royale mentioned in the headline of this post, will win. Of course, when it's put that way, I think Michael Wolff would agree.

The "Television" Wolff refers to is the business, not the device. Or as Wolff states:

"TV the business model derives revenue from content pushed through a distribution network also called 'TV.' The health of the distribution channel is a vastly different issue from the health of the businesses using it.

"Of all the bets to make, perhaps the least safe one--and the bet underpinning digital's hopes of grabbing a meaningful piece of television's revenues--is that people will stop watching TV, even if they stop watching THE TV."

What Wolff is addressing is the argument that YouTube and Facebook could kill the industry creating "professionally made, scripted narratives." His argument is that YouTube and Facebook's business models are essentially selling advertising and nothing attracts advertising dollars nearly as well as high quality, professionally produced content. User generated content, on the other hand, will never have the same value to advertisers in large part because there is just too much of it. If YouTube and Facebook want to grab a piece of TV's revenues, then they need to get in the Television business--or more precisely, in the business of creating exclusive professional, scripted narrative content. In doing so, they'll help fund the existing institution consisting of writers, directors, producers and actors that are currently in the Television business.

Michael Wolff sees cord-cutters dropping cable television in favor of Netflix as proof rather than an anomaly. "Digital Convergence," Wolff states, "turns out not so much to be about bringing computing to your television but about bringing more television to your television." After all, when Netflix needed a break-through television series in a competitive landscape that was becoming increasingly commoditized, they turned to well known and well established Hollywood talent in the form of David Fincher and Kevin Spacey. Netflix, a tech company, became a traditional stodgy television company.

Wolff's ideas around bundling are incredibly provocative and worthy of discussion. To him, the current iteration of cable bundling is inevitably doomed. And what will replace it? Different, more efficient, more transparent bundles. After all, aren't Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO Go and Sling their own forms of a bundle?

Regarding the cable companies, they of course own the high speed connections necessary to receive the new form of Television. It turns out that they will be just fine as well.

Bottom line, Television is the New Television is a challenging read. You'd be wrong to dismiss it for being the same old story where the horse has already left the barn. If you can digest the nuance and complexity of his argument, I think you'd agree it's a little ahead of it's time even if it sounds at first like anything but.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite podcasts? - <AUTHOR>

Mine are: radiolab, the economist podcasts, and the new yorker podcasts. Would love to learn about other podcasts that people love. <comment><USER2> In no particular order, my favorites are:

      Various podcasts from the BBC: Discovery, Documentaries, Science Hour
      The Joe Rogan Experience
      Stuff You Should Know
      The Freelancers' Show
      The Tim Ferriss Show
      Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
      Freakonomics Radio

</comment><comment><USER3> Favorite Web-related ones:

        The Web Ahead
        The Changelog
        O'Reilly Radar
        TLDR

Other Topics:

        Radiolab (Science)
        99 Percent Invisible (Design)

</comment><comment><USER4> shoptalkshow.com not very informative, but fun to listen.

</comment><comment><USER5> ATP</comment>


Show HN: Podcast List - <AUTHOR> https://www.podcastlist.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, I've recently worked on this simple side project.

It's a "database"/curated list of tech podcasts. I've built this because I think it's very difficult discover new tech podcasts (often aren't categorized well in itunes) I want think Podcast List as a open database for tech podcasts.

I've implemented an api too: [https://www.podcastlist.io/api](https://www.podcastlist.io/api) feel free to use it.

Any feedback is welcome.

<comment><USER2> Well I wish I had read this before submitting mine. lol. I didn't realize it focused on tech podcasts. It might be a good idea to have a description of that somewhere on the site so that people understand that it's just for tech podcasts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry :(

<comment><USER2> It's completely fine! I jumped the gun :)

EDIT: It's also a really pretty site btw. I love the simplicity of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this only going to be tech and business podcasts? Or will you consider including things like The Film Reroll and other RPG/Hobby podcasts?

<comment><AUTHOR> Only tech podcasts, sorry :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great! Found a few SaaS- and bootstrapping-related podcasts that I wasn't aware of.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot!</comment></comment>


Samsung buying WebOS? I wish they would. It's great. - <AUTHOR> http://www.fabcapo.com/2011/08/samsung-buying-webos-it-makes-sense.html

<comment><USER2> _webOS still has no developers, which is the reason they did not make it._

WTF! As a webOS developer I'll be damned if someone says that the developers were the reason the platform didn't thrive. Between the official channels and preware there was plenty of development going on. Probably not in iOS or Android numbers. Here it is: Palm transitioned from Mojo to Enyo. Developers are writing applications in Enyo since that is where the future of the platform lies. The only device that used Enyo was the Touchpad. Once Apotheker shitcanned that product a lot of webOS developers were left holding the bag.

 _Samsung would have to build support on it, make it really cool and attractive for developers._

They would have to do no such thing. Steady improvements and a real commitment is all we ask. The platform is good on its own but if it has no rudder the community isn't going to steer it for you.

 _They added an App Store late and it never really took off_

This will come as surprise to a lot of v1 Sprint Pre owners. "Hey what's this icon do? It says App Catalog but that can't be right because according to this blog they haven't created it yet. Must be some sort of trick!"

As a mobile developer I've put my project on the shelf because I don't know what HP is going to do with it and there are so many other mobile platforms that are still kicking. Under the current CEO I have no confidence that webOS is going to survive in any useful form.

<comment><USER3> I would say WebOS actually had outsized development support given its anemic support from its parents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The CEO of Samsung denied it: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-02/samsung- electronics...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-02/samsung-electronics- says-it-won-t-pursue-hp-s-webos.html)

But HTC could be interested: [http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?Type=aALL...](http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?Type=aALL&ID=201109120009)

<comment><USER5> I remember seeing the Palm Pre 3 at the HP WebOS event and thinking it was going to be huge. A lot of people were comparing it the Droid Bionic at the time.

I think the OS has a lot of potential in the right hands - but I can't think of any company who would want it. HTC has already had great success in running Android on their handsets, and really has no need to spend a ton of money to get it tested and implemented on some future handset.

Maybe they'd pick it for a tablet line??

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Samsung already owns a smartphone OS - Bada. Why would they want another one?

</comment><comment><USER7> They don't need to buy an operating system, because operating systems and native applications are becoming obsolete.

Everything is going web, whether people like it or not. Apple's success with IOS has tricked a lot of other companies, like Microsoft and RIM, into believing they need to compete directly on. I think Samsung is a lot smarter than people think. Really all they need is a phone with a good web browser because the underlying system is becoming only a support system to access the web.

<comment><USER8> Isn't WebOS basically like that already? From what I understand, it uses most of the same tooling as regular HTML apps, just with some OS hooks. But then I don't know much.

If that's the case, then it's the closest to what you describe out of the mobile OSes out there.

<comment><USER7> WebOS is still a native platform, you happen to build native apps using html and js. I mean native apps themselves are going to largely be phased out in the coming years. Samaung should be building something more like Google's ChromeOS.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Execs Expressed 'Shock and Disbelief' at Internet Address Shortage - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/05/14/microsoft-execs-expressed-shock-and-disbelief-at-internet-address-shortage/?mod=WSJ_TechWSJD_NeedToKnow <comment><USER2> What kind of fucking retards are at work here?

Microsoft's previous incompetence have been explained away for decades that it only makes business sense to be just "good enough". But there has to be limits.

<comment><USER3> > What kind of fucking retards are at work here?

Please read and follow the site guidelines when commenting on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER2> I have read the guidelines. There was nothing gratuitous about that comment, given the subject matter.

<comment><USER3> > given the subject matter

That's a but-he-started-it argument. You can justify anything that way.

The negativity in your comment was gratuitous because it added nothing substantive, only bile. Whether the other person started it or not, or is a fucking retard or not, is beside the point. You owe better behavior, if not to them, then to the community.

For civil and substantive discussion, we all need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the (frequently objectionable) one we perceive other people to be keeping. The alternative is a downward spiral.

<comment><USER2> In this context, gratuitous means unwarranted.

I can't imagine a situation when that degree of negativity is more warranted than when one of the world's most successful IT companies' undoubtedly most skilled executives and network engineers only in 2015 realized what the rest of the computer networking community has been talking about for more than 20 years.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Application to prevent data leakage in source code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/GitGuardian/Getting-Started-With-The-Individual-App <comment><AUTHOR> Monitor GitHub - Detect sensitive information - Be alerted in real time</comment>


Ask HN - Review My Idea: Make Work More Like Games - <AUTHOR> http://thezukunft.com/2010/02/24/business-idea-week-work-games/ <comment><USER2> If only there were some sort of tokens employers could give employees as an incentive. The tokens could then be exchanged for goods and services. Perhaps the production and circulation of tokens could be managed by the government to prevent abuse..

<comment><USER3> However, empirically we've seen that touching token allocations causes huge amount of resentment and is very, very difficult to do in an elastic manner. Demands of the business can arise in hours or days, token allocation tweaks take years to take effect. We've seen that people will react -- within seconds -- to non-token incentives to do things that certainly resemble work. Blizzard can make a database entry with a few purple pixels attached and _wham_ several million people start doing very repetitive tasks to achieve it. Think of the business value that could be harnessed if a little alert on my dashboard said "Hey Patrick, that funky Mersenne Twister re-implementation that has been in purgatory for the last 12 weeks and is now blocking delivery now is offering purple pixels for unit testing!"

I know you can game any system for rewards -- it has been a near obsession of mine since a kid, when I found that 89.5% is still an A- and that meant I could still miss 3 homework assignments and not suffer any consequences as long as I did really well on the tests. Like was mentioned in the video posted yesterday, everyone knows that grades are a game... its just an unsophisticated game that sucks, but nonetheless seems to converge on education for many people. Grades as a game have always been Pong in a world where Pacman exists... now they're Pong in a world where WoW exists. (Or even where Farmville exists.) Holy cow, we can abuse that better. ("Little Timmy learned 7 * 8 = 56. Ding, Mathematician Level 14! _Gratz Timmy_!")

<comment><USER2> _token allocation tweaks take years to take effect_

This is mostly a function of a particular method of token allocation, rather than a property of the tokens. There are entire lines of work where the allocation is quite elastic - people who work on commission, people who make a significant part of their income based on performance bonuses, etc. Even at start-ups, in my experience, bonuses for important milestones are not all that uncommon, even if they often are, well, token.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also, obligatory-TED-video-exposing-counterintuitive-point: <http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html>

Providing higher rewards decreases performance.

<comment><USER5> Actually providing rewards decreases performance in creative problem solving. He actually said that it worked really well ("kicked butt") in getting people to perform simple mechanical skills based tasks.

Besides, the point isn't about increasing performance in situations where people are highly engaged regardless, it's about increasing engagement where motivation can wane, especially in more menial type of tasks/jobs.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 There is probably a pretty large body of work on employee motivation and reward systems in the academic literature. I'd suggest familiarizing yourself pretty closely with all of the research before going anywhere with this idea.

<comment><USER6> There _is_ a large body of work on this. The short, short version: this is a Very Bad Idea.

For an intro into the subject, check out "Punished By Rewards" by Alfie Kohn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was a time when I played WoW religiously, and actually had my own guild. This was back in the day, when guilds spent 30+ hours a week clearing dungeons that required 40 people to memorize and execute intricate strategies. Even though my guild was relatively successful, motivating people to show up to these raids was _always_ a chore. Many players consistently left dungeons early, or avoided them altogether. Interestingly enough, these same players didn't mind spending hours grinding or fishing or hanging out in the city, doing nothing in particular. They did this despite the fact that raiding dungeons was more productive, stimulating, exciting, challenging, and potentially rewarding.

I suspect one of the appeals of doing repetitive, mindless things like fishing or grinding in games is because... they're repetitive and mindless. There are real-life equivalents: clicking around on Hacker News, slumping on a couch for hours watching television, etc. These activities are much less mentally exhausting, much less stressful than doing actual work.

Anyway, I think your idea is a great one, but there are some hurdles. If you reward people for menial activities, then they'll waste tons of time on it because it's mindless and easy. Chances are this type of work is not what any company would want its employees doing. If you only reward people for actual demanding work, then chances are you won't really be adding anything.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, there are a lot of jobs that are pretty mindless. Let's help these people out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You have to be very careful that people don't 'game' the system. Metrics like these are rife for exploitation - especially likely if the metrics and rewards are designed by people who don't have a deep understanding of rule systems.

"Ding! 10,000 lines of code reached!" \-- A recipe for a very bloated product

<comment><USER10> Well, that's not that difficult. Have negative tokens for bugs filed, similar to loss of experience for dying in an RPG.

<comment><USER11> It seems someone needs to read Joel's article on metrics: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020715.html> . Relevant quote:

 _Software organizations tend to reward programmers who (a) write lots of code and (b) fix lots of bugs. The best way to get ahead in an organization like this is to check in lots of buggy code and fix it all, rather than taking the extra time to get it right in the first place. When you try to fix this problem by penalizing programmers for creating bugs, you create a perverse incentive for them to hide their bugs or not tell the testers about new code they wrote in hopes that fewer bugs will be found. You can't win._

<comment><USER10> While I find Joel's articles interesting and often enlightening, I don't think "someone" needs to treat them as the Word From On High of software development or program management.

Anyway, that's still not impossible to solve. After the design phase, reward for every module shipped, then deduct points for every bug reported by users. If the programmer is able to hide bugs such that they _never manifest in production_ , I say all power to him.

<comment><USER11> Now the programmer has an incentive to make their subsystem hard to use, so users don't go there and report bugs. C'mon, add some more epicycles.

<comment><USER10> Why would the bug reporting mechanism be in a subsystem? Unless every subsystem had its own bug reporting mechanism, which makes zero sense.

[Edit]

Oh ok, I think I see what you mean. Well, firstly, if a subsystem weren't integral to the app, why develop it in the first place? Secondly, you could always track the usage of the subsystem and provide additional incentives for its success. Lastly, who says subsystems have to be directly accessible to the user? If tasked to write a module that runs in the background, one can hardly make it deliberately obtuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> it's too difficult to build a "one size fits all" application. as an example, target has one goal with their cashiers: a fast checkout process. so they start a timer when the first item is scanned, and that timer only stops once the receipt has been printed. i was just at a target last week and the cashier told me she had to pause the transaction while someone found something i had asked to be put on hold; she was actually worried about receiving a low score. the score looks like this: 92% A, or 85% B, etc.

so target's "reward" mechanism is partially built into their POS machines, while the other part is driven by their management. if you sell more than 3 target cards in a day, you can pick out anything in the store <$20 for free. that could be built, but it'd have to be tied into target's hardware to work. and how are you going to give those badges away in that case?

i guess i'm not sold on the idea because i don't see any specific examples of where it would be compelling. maybe web-based companies, at that point your main goals are things like code written or commits. so you could monitor all employee's github accounts (as an example) and send out a company e-mail with badges based on that. just an example.

<comment><USER8> I think the most appealing market are government agencies and large corporations with lots of paperwork, such as insurances.

The process of managing a customer request in an insurance company goes like this: file the request, create a template mail, press "send", have it printed. Why not stir that up a little?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a great idea and has crossed my mind many times. In fact, it was one of the motivations behind our current startup. (<http://blog.iactionable.com/> & <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126780>)

I think (and hope) the achievement/badge trend will continue to grow and show up in all sorts of new places. The biggest hurdle we are facing is finding ways to 'hook' into the events which get tracked and converted into badges. Its pretty simple for websites, but for a company to setup or modify existing systems to automatically ping events is no small undertaking for that company. Maybe there's an opportunity for consulting here too?

Then there's trying to decide what things are valuable for company X to track and award badges for. All this takes time and money. With a little backing info from research studies I could see companies giving this a shot. There are existing services which allow employees to give 'kudos' points to each other for things they do. This would be taking that to the next level and fully automating it.

<comment><USER8> Have you looked into workflow engines at all? If a company had any of those deployed, tracking the metrics would be easy.

I don't think the problem lies in tracking the metrics. It lies in managing and organizing the "game".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have tried doing this repeatedly for me individually and every time it has failed. The reasons:

1\. Hard to define measurable goals: How many points for a bug fix. What if a bug fix requires 5 mins other requires 4hrs. Its hard to assign points to each individual work item and track 'em.

2\. How to set good milestones.

3\. Avoiding Karma whoring: How to stop from racking companionship points by having extended lunches

In a company scenario it would be hard to sell this idea to all employees and might deter some prospective employee to join as it might set the corporation's image as childish in the outside world.

</comment><comment><USER15> If your job is like fishing in WoW, it should be automated so that you can actually do something of value with your time.

A better approach: <http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html>

</comment><comment><USER16> My favorite talk from TED2010 was by Jane McGonical and her theory was that kids around the world spend enormous amounts of time and effort playing games. They should not be considered losers for gaming so much, everyone else is the loser for not knowing how to tap their energy.

Her idea is not so much applying game dynamics to real life, but changing existing games slightly so that people solve more important problems (think ending world hunger by leveling up).

You can find several games she created on <http://www.avantgame.com/>

The talk is not yet online, but I"ll post it on HN when it comes out.

</comment><comment><USER17> I used to work in a tech support call center. They tracked every metric you can imagine. A large percentage of the tech support staff were WoW addicts, so I could definitely see this working.

<comment><USER13> Ha! I seriously laughed when I read your comment. Only because I actually work for a company that sells SaaS Call Center software and this has DEFINITELY been on my mind. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A company spanning system is a pretty lofty goal. Perhaps you should look into something smaller, say something at the application level. A good example would be Ribbon Hero for MS Office.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like it. I've worked at a few big corporations where you'd get special plaques or pins for years of service, good ideas, attending certain training courses, and so on, and although I personally didn't understand the appeal -- I'd rather have challenging and meaningful work -- the people who earned those awards seemed to display them proudly. I always wondered why that kind of "rep grinding" wasn't more prevalent than the usual winner-take-all "employee of the month" stuff.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can't believe this wasn't posted, I believe the following video was a heavy source of inspiration for that blog post... [http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the- Bo...](http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the-Box- Presentation) Brilliant 30 minute talk by Jesse Schell (funny too), I was looking for it before everyone started posting billions of comments but Chrome's history acted up in a funky way. Oops :)

<comment><USER19> If you want to find out more about this guy, I'd recommend checking out his website: <http://artofgamedesign.com/>

<comment><USER20> His book is also excellent: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0123694965?ie=UTF8&ta...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0123694965?ie=UTF8&tag=nohao-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0123694965) \- I checked it out of the library recently and it really is a bible for game design. It literally covers everything you'd want to know about making high- quality games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Your mind always knows if it's working or having fun. Every way to trick the mind in confusing the two fools it at most for a short time, then it catches up. I guess that's because your mind is about as clever as you are yourself (and it knows what you're trying to do!).

Also there are already reward systems which are real. I like to be proud of what I do. I like to be rewarded with fair payment. I think stuff like that works better for me than an artificially added point-system.

</comment><comment><USER22> There was a recent VentureBeat article by the authors of Total Engagement: [http://games.venturebeat.com/2010/01/15/the-lesson-of- gaming...](http://games.venturebeat.com/2010/01/15/the-lesson-of-gaming-why- do-we-have-to-pay-people-to-work/)

We're working with several companies to implement game mechanics for both training and job performance: <http://www.bunchball.com>

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't think this will work in the tech world. Don't you think developers will try to game the system just to make more points?

Joel already discussed this kind of renumeration, he gave an example of bugs. If you pay your developers more money if they produce bug-free code, they won't report bugs and it'll result in a worse result.

<comment><USER8> Point taken. But the market of lowly routine workers is much bigger anyway, right? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is a HBS Press book that goes into this in detail. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/142214657X?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/142214657X?ie=UTF8&tag=emilam0e-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=142214657X)

</comment><comment><USER25> I think a better solution would be to find an innovative way to add interaction like "The Fun Theory" people:

[http://experimentgarden.blogspot.com/2009/11/fun-theory- how-...](http://experimentgarden.blogspot.com/2009/11/fun-theory-how- entertainment-increases.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> This idea is similar to:

<http://chorewars.com>

</comment><comment><USER27> Tangent: This reminds me of a free book I downloaded on the kindle: Metagame <http://www.amazon.com/MetaGame-ebook/dp/B002AJ88LC>

</comment><comment><USER4> I think a far better idea for the hypothetical Bor Ingsurance is to hire only WoW addicts, skip the ball-point-pens\star-stickers, and reward them with in- game items and gold.

</comment><comment><USER28> Too Dilbertesque for my tastes, sorry.

<comment><USER29> Just what I was thinking: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD4-EON1RhI>

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> you forgot one thing: not everyone likes to play games.

</comment><comment><USER31> I believe that this would only be really beneficial for a McJob-like work environment where the employees believe their work has very little importance or impact.

I would imagine that working at a start-up or at Google or at some other fast- paced innovative company would negate the need such a system and would possibly devalue (within the employee's mind) the importance of their work.

<comment><USER13> Probably true, but that doesn't mean there isn't a market for such a idea. What do you think the ratio of McJobs to Startups/Google jobs is?

<comment><USER32> Exactly. The overwhelming majority of all jobs in any sector probably suck.</comment></comment></comment>


AbsCrypt [Chariot Technologies Lab Inc] - <AUTHOR> AbsCrypt is the first working and fully developed cybersecurity application which based on metaprogramming. We are winners of multiple international competitions and Hackathons in computer science and cryptography. We will start global testing of our encryption in partnership with bugcrowd in October with 100k$ award for researches.Our main advantages over others are:
* High speed, our encryption algorithm are minimum 10 times faster than RSA asymmetric encryption for small documents encryption and more than 100 times faster for big files. The deference depends on size of key&file.You can encrypt and decrypt big media file within a seconds!
* Not only post-quantum, developed for Non-determine Turing machine. Future super and quantum computers won't be able to hack us.
*Our product can be used like hybrid
 encryption and also can speed up your prime numbers based encryption like RSA (minimum 30%)
How we can convert if conditions and words into math?
Our main formula is the formula, which can replace logical condition like "if" with a mathematical formula. You can check that we are first, who do it for all data types. Our algorithm can convert a text into math function. In an example we can convert "Hello world!" into math function:  https://gist.github.com/timurryspekov/ea32cd1bca74a0910b8d5a698a483dad
The console demo of working metaprogramming algorithm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui7Y8dZPXcw
For the initial proof of working code, I attached a working code to find  primes up to 120 and 168 with just one simple loop with simple arithmetic (you can check that it's new way to work with prime numbers and we are first, who do it).
https://gist.github.com/timurryspekov/e7394c24b83ae989749f6000ac6c5cb4    (up to 120)
https://gist.github.com/timurryspekov/3576c1a20fae07b6671aa6fd05943ec5 (up to 168)
Demo of sieves speedup (simple version of our formula): https://youtu.be/CbZpRKC0sBg
Looking forward to hearing from you, BR, Tim <comment><AUTHOR> Our website is www.abscrypt.com . Our main YC account for application is Abs_lab</comment>


The Java type system is broken (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://wouter.coekaerts.be/2018/java-type-system-broken <comment> java-man You can tell it's broken when the Collections framework and JavaFX (a part of JDK before Java 11) could not use the capture conversion themselves.

The only solution seems to be to drop the type system in the places where it can't be used.</comment>


Uber told to pull over self-driving fleet by California's DMV - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2016/12/15/uber-at-odds-with-the-california-department-of-motor-vehicles-tl4/ <comment><USER2> It's outrageous what Uber thinks it can get away with (and often does). Granted, the app is nifty, but most of the value seems derived from regulatory arbitrage and shifting less visible costs back to the driver.</comment>


Show HN: Battletapp - Two icons enter... - <AUTHOR> http://battletapp.com

<comment><USER2> This is really cleanly done!

Likes:

-> Excellent UI

-> Fantastic Transitions

-> Great fade in/effects on the way out

-> Well done subtle UX elements like moving the icons on mouse over

-> Well done [i] buttons made me curious enough to click on it

Improvements:

-> Maybe touch up the Roger that, let's rumble part to be in white text by default, then like orange or something striking on mouse over

-> Potentially include an about/privacy/disclaimer of referral links (if you use them) to increase user trust - site looked too good to be true.

-> Potentially increase size of "download in the app store"

-> Would love to see top rankings to know what my ratings are going towards; I feel unmotivated to click more than like 6 or 7 once the novelty wears off

-> Would love way to share a comparison I have been shown with friends (Will also increase virality of app), as well as my history

-> Potentially an undo method somehow if the user misclicks, I know I did once

Overall: great job and two thumbs up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for the feedback! I was a little nervous submitting this here, but was hopeful for the constructive critique. Your thought out notes really made my day :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Love to hear your thoughts & ideas!</comment>


Adobe to charge 9% royalty on Flash games - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/29/developers-adobe-flash-charge/

<comment><AUTHOR> More business rational to head over to HTML. Interestingly enough their pricing model puts it directly in competition with engines like Unity and even the Unreal Engine.

</comment><comment><USER2> Why don't companies ever learn? Any company that has tried something like this (Microchannel, Rambus,gif) quickly lost its marketshare to a free alternative.</comment>