An Introduction to Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> http://blog.algorithmia.com/introduction-to-deep-learning-2016/ <comment><USER2> I found this panel video to be quite good discussion of DL. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=furfdqtdAvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=furfdqtdAvc)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Ford predicts self-driving cars will see widespread use within the next five > years. The U.S. government has gotten on board by issuing safety guidelines.

I would love to see what those guidelines entail. For example, how thoroughly do systems need to be retested after major and minor updates? And how are we going to enforce those safety guidelines, given the scandals with emission guidelines (which is a much less complicated territory) we've seen lately (e.g. VW).

<comment><USER4> Emission guidelines are less complicated, but I suspect more gameable. Also if systems break the guidelines, the result is likely to be detected by end users, to put it lightly.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but consider the dilemma: recalling or grounding hundreds of thousands of vehicles with a bug, fixing the bug and testing it for thousands of driving- hours (this will take weeks), and then patching those vehicles. Versus: making a quick fix and quietly uploading it.

Therefore, one thing I think should happen is that governments should forbid companies to upload fixes to cars directly. Instead, the uploading should be done by a government-controlled agency, and it should check that those uploads are at least X weeks/months old.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does back end or front end bring more value to the company? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Depends on what the two ends are doing.

For example, an ML back-end is probably more valuable than the front end, because that's the meat of the business. A portfolio site designed expressly for viewing is little more than a CMS with a glossy paint job--front-end is more valuable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whatever it is that gives the customer an impression of value received is most important.</comment>


Show HN: Skit – minimal presentation slides for the CLI - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jpeinelt/skit <comment><USER2> This is the kind of thing I come to HN for. I'll never use it, but I love the creativity and the drive and the spirit that went into this. Just building a beautiful thing because it's fun and beautiful. Love it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I'm also not sure if I ever seriously use it but it's a long time since I had so much fun programming something. I couldn't stay away from the computer and "binged" it in the last 3 days of my vacation. Such joy.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This really is just a fun little weekend project to learn Go.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice! Resembles Trikita's Slide app (shameless plug, used it in several conference talks). [https://github.com/trikita/slide](https://github.com/trikita/slide) and [https://github.com/zserge/slide](https://github.com/zserge/slide)

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know about these, thanks for the links!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just leave this here:

[https://translate.google.fi/?#view=home&op=translate&sl=sv&t...](https://translate.google.fi/?#view=home&op=translate&sl=sv&tl=en&text=skit)

:D

<comment><AUTHOR> :D

such a small word, so many meanings</comment></comment>


If You Need to Work Better, Maybe Try Working Less  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574429151858232582.html?mod=rss_careers

<comment><USER2> "Let your workings remain a mystery. Just show people the results."

-Lao Tzu, "Tao Te Ching"

From anecdotal experience, some of those (in a typical corporate environment) who trump their 'working overtime' don't do much during 'normal' working hours.

I talked to a guy in an airport security line once, and he was a million-mile frequent flier. He related how he took his entire family (wife, kids, extended family - 20 in total) to Hawaii on Marriott Rewards points and frequent flier miles. You could tell the unspoken fact was that two weeks they spent together was probably the most time he's spent with them in years. Working hard seems to be a badge of honor nowadays but is it really something that fulfills you?

<comment><USER3> That's a life changing quote by Lao Tzu. Really. And this one, another of my favorites from the Book of Five Rings: "Do nothing of no use."

<comment><USER2> Thank you. I read a PDF of the translation (I think - only 33 pages). I'm going to have to read it several times again but I kind of grasp that the important points are: there is no one set way to approach sword-fighting (and life), practice always practice.

In case you read this, thanks again for spurring me to read this and what does the 'Book of Five Rings' mean to you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article doesn't reveal much because it confuses 2 different scenarios:

1\. The research result that a small amount of offtime, e.g. "In the Boston Consulting study ... guarantee each consultant one uninterrupted evening free each week", "can yield unexpected on-the-job benefits"

and

2\. Examples of employees taking much longer times off, e.g. "staffers are expected to leave in time for dinner" (presumably every work day, and probably only 5 work days per week), and ""wellness scorecards" to track whether employees are working too much overtime"

Without diminishing the importance of prioritisation, the article doesn't reveal anything about offtime any longer than a very limited "one uninterrupted evening free each week".</comment>


Your company culture is a meaningless platitude - <AUTHOR> http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/06/your-company-culture-is-a-meaningless-platitude/ <comment><USER2> You don't pick your own nickname.

You don't declare your own reputation.

You don't define your own company culture.

All of these things are object code, "compiled" by others based upon your behavior, which is the source.

What you do screams louder that what you say. Do good and you won't have to worry about what others say. _That_ is "company culture".

<comment><USER3> While I agree with the observations, I think this is not a good definition of company culture.

A company culture is the set of prevailing ethics within an organization which determines things like work ethic; attitudes towards change; levels of internal cooperation vs internal competition; treatment of customers, competitors, and suppliers; valuation of individuals' attributes; etc.

Company culture can be perceived by outsiders, but it doesn't rely on what others say or whether you are doing Good or not. It exists even in the absence of those things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always believed company culture comes down to 1 thing: peoples' belief about how awesome their life is going to be next month... In other words, optimism and stuff to look forward to. Whether that's fabulous wealth, fun social time with coworkers, etc-- you have to have faith that things will be awesome in the future or you start looking.

Doesn't matter how many scavenger hunts or catered lunches you have.

Of course, you can get "awesome inflation". Day 1 at Google, maybe you're blown away by the catered lunches and at-desk free pedicures. A year later, maybe not.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it's that binary. There are definitely times where I've been on teams where I knew things were looking grim, but where I felt a bond with my everyone, and it was a fellowship that made us dig in to give our best effort. That can be very sustaining (moreso if you feel good about your future team- finding skills, I suppose).

<comment><USER5> I think it's a mistake to be focusing on the 1 month time frame. You dug in because you valued the people you were working with, and thought that digging and giving your best effort were likely to be enough to pull you through. I've been on teams like that with (10%) pay cuts and was happy I was there. Things did improve.

However, I was there 2 years later and it was happening again. None of the core issues had been addressed or were open to being addressed, and I was happy to be laid off. The majority of the other employees left within the following year.

Good people, interesting technology, but the corporate culture was dying. The company still exists, and the continued emphasis on good customer service and niche market keeps them running (from what I've heard from current employees). I'd be surprised if the software technology has improved in the past 5 years, but it still does what it has to do.

<comment><USER4> That's a good point-- the horizon that people care about probably widely varies... But people want to climb mountains. If you can say with a straight face, "I really don't think it's going to get better than this," I don't think you can last long!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A company's culture matters quite a bit. Where the author makes a giant mistake, however, is in assuming that a company's culture is what it says it is.

I've worked at several organizations, and I can tell you that they definitely do have different cultures and sometimes that culture is a big contributor to success.

On a smaller scale, it's similar to the way a startup takes on the personality of its founder/s.

<comment><USER7> I didn't see that as the author's mistake, but rather as the point of the article, that a company's culture isn't what they say it is, but what they do differently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read this story about Googles culture.

When Google was really young, and wasn't sure how to make money, it was hiring. What Google found was that engineers didn't care if Google was going to win or fail, they cared about culture. And Google had it in spades.

Engineers were leaving well paid safe jobs to work in Googles culture, often taking pay cuts.

Made me think how important culture really is for the very best people.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great article Dan. Culture is such an intangible unquantifiable thing that many people overlook. While I do agree on the 4 points you mentioned I believe that alot of company culture bleeds out of the personality of the CEO. They usually set the precedent and tone especially in a small startup.

<comment><USER10> _Culture is such an intangible unquantifiable thing that many people overlook._

I think it's pretty obvious once you start to look for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> More than anything, I think that its the word "culture" that makes this all screwed up. If you have a good "culture" (in the article's sense), people will want to work there, which is a good thing. If you dont, you will have talent troubles. Therefore, culture is important.

However, culture may be the wrong term, and I am always weary about a company that trumpets their culture.

At the end of the day, I want to work someplace awesome. Call it culture or attitude, it matters.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very, very good article. Another thing that bugs me about corp-talk is the phrases you _always_ find on job adverts. Apparently every successful job candidate in Britain over the last two decades has had 'excellent interpersonal and communication skills.'

</comment><comment><USER13> Great post! This part is golden: "When the company picks up your nighttime MBA, that's a great benefit – but when Teachstreet (a company that helps people find local and online classes) gets its employees together to learn how to build kites, now that's a quirk. It's not to say that corporate mandates can't make great quirks, although the best ones often arise spontaneously from the teams themselves"

I'm looking forward to more on what in a culture can be assigned and determined proactively versus what should be left emergent...after all, the culture is a reflection of what you want to be and what you already are, right?

</comment><comment><USER14> The meaningless platitude that management uses to describe what they aspire to have their company culture be, is a meaningless platitude.

Ancient HR policies and hokey mission statements are no match for a good NERF gun at your side.

<comment><USER15> It writes the code or we take away the Nerf gun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think company culture is what you make of it, especially in a startup. You have the ability to help shape the workplace you're in and if you don't contribute, don't complain.

For me, I want to enjoy coming to work because of two reasons: (1) Building a product that connects with me and solves a real problem (2) I enjoy working with the people I'm with. It's the sense of camaraderie you build. All that other stuff contributes to that.

</comment><comment><USER17> You really find out what the culture is, when times are tough. When the freebies disappear, there's no chance of a raise this year, and deadlines loom - what happens? Probably too late to find out your "culture" was hedonism etc. as everyone flies out the door, resume in hand.

</comment><comment><USER18> Medeus ex extremitus or "the ends define the middle"

What is Normal is by definition defined by what is not normal.

<comment><USER18> sorry if my Latin is awful btw

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Side note: I think "platitude" implies "meaningless."

<comment><USER10> "Meaningless platitude" has lost all of its currency.

;) for the humor impaired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This thread can't be any more appropriate to my current situation at work.

We are defining our culture but not all of the employees are on the same page.

We're still trying to figure out the best way to do it. I actually do not want to try too hard to convince people to accept a particular type of culture. It's either you like it or you don't.

A company should only keep those people that fits its culture.

<comment><USER21> >A company should only keep those people that fits its culture.

This is where I get nervous when people start talking about "company culture". It will inevitably lead to this. Whatever happened to hiring people that can do the job, hopefully well? If the job requires that they have an "outgoing personality", like some sort of salesmen, then the requirement that they can do the job will be all you need.

When you start weeding people out based on your completely arbitrary idea of what the company "culture" should be, I think that becomes a problem. This is only one step above race and sex based discrimination. Personality based discrimination should not be allowed (with the obvious caveat that you should be allowed to fire people with toxic personalities).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Excellent, excellent, excellent! Reminds me of a tweet from yesterday (<http://twitter.com/scottporad/status/15799876237>):

quote from @benhuh, "culture is shorthand for the attitude people have at work".

</comment><comment><USER23> In my work experience I've noticed a positive correlation between employers that _told_ me what their company culture was (especially via folders of documents, and wall signs) and employers that had an _unpleasant_ , _stiff_ , and _hypocritical_ company culture.

The employers that didn't have an HR department, and/or didn't tell me what their culture was beforehand tended to end up having nicer cultures. Go figure.

<comment><USER24> They have to tell you because you couldn't possibly arrive at that conclusion on your own (especially since it isn't true).</comment></comment>


The Convenience Economy Has Disrupted Millennials - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/utopiapress/the-convenience-paradox-9e5756655000 <comment><AUTHOR> Free choice is the opium for the masses, as the prospects of young people have diminished considerably in recent times. Tech companies bundle this choice illusion as "convenience".</comment>


Librarian Quietly Saved $4M, Left It to School Where He Worked - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/librarian-quietly-saved-million-left-school-worked/story?id=41858903 <comment><USER2> He works his entire life and lives simply -- and the university uses his bequest to buy a new video scoreboard for the football stadium. Sad!</comment>


Grand Central Dispatch internals and FreeBSD port [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.freebsd.org/200909DevSummit?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=20090918-devsummit-gcd-public.pdf

<comment><USER2> pg: the scribd link doesn't properly encode this URL and thus breaks. The correct URL is:

[http://www.scribd.com/vacuum?url=http://wiki.freebsd.org/200...](http://www.scribd.com/vacuum?url=http://wiki.freebsd.org/200909DevSummit%3Faction%3DAttachFile%26do%3Dget%26target%3D20090918-devsummit- gcd-public.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am curious what the answers to the questions on page 33 will be. I am quite curious what open source operating systems add to optimize for parallel (this, something else, or nothing).</comment>


MathJax CDN shutting down on April 30, 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.mathjax.org/cdn-shutting-down/ <comment><USER2> Will the developers of Chromium and Edge perhaps reconsider incorporating native support for MathML in light of this, considering that apparently people do use maths on the web?

180 million monthly users is a significant portion of the world's population. I'm not sure to what extent MathJax is cached, so it's possible that these are not 180 million unique users. On the other hand, this does not include all those self-hosting MathJax, using KaTeX or just using server-generated images (for example Wikipedia†).

†It's possible to force Wikipedia to use native MathML (which, at least on Firefox, looks really nice) or MathJax, but it's non-trivial.

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6606](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6606)

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=152430](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=152430)

[https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge- dev...](https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge- developer/suggestions/6508572-mathml)

<comment><USER3> People use math, but they use it with Latex not MathML, MathML is too verbose, so even if browsers implemented it people would need libraries like MathJax.

<comment><USER4> Nothing is stopping you from authoring your math however you like as long as there are tools that support the translation[1]:

[1]: [http://fred-wang.github.io/TeXZilla/](http://fred- wang.github.io/TeXZilla/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be interesting to see what they tried to bill them. I can push out 70TB for about $700 right now (through our 11 PoP anycast network). AWS S3 would have cost $5,717.85 according to their calculator. My guess is the bill is somewhere in the middle.

If you don't need a fancy anycast network, you can buy a 1GbE pipe from Hurricane Electric for about $400/mo and push 192TB/mo through it. Actually they include that when you get their $400/mo server cabinets in the bay area. Probably not the best option ever, but I don't think S3 is 14.29x better than it. Dedicated server providers like OVH might be okay with it too, probably ask them first. But if you had 2-4 servers and round-robined them my guess is you would be fine. You could get one server in Europe and one in NA and GeoDNS them and get probably-good-enough close to what an anycast network can do. For ~$200/mo. Not too bad.

I've given my rant a million times so I won't do it again, but "The Cloud" heavily upcharges on bandwidth. Or they tell you it's "unlimited" (a word I've learned through experience to hate) then tell you "except for the kind of stuff you're doing" and send a bill or shut you down. If you've got to ship a ton of bandwidth, you should at least look into the alternatives.

If you really want to go future tech, look into something like IPFS ([https://ipfs.io](https://ipfs.io)) - it was built for stuff like this and it's going to make a real dent in transit costs for heavy data sets, CDNs, package distribution and the like. I absolutely cannot wait for the distributed web.

<comment><USER6> > I've given my rant a million times so I won't do it again, but "The Cloud" > heavily upcharges on bandwidth. Or they tell you it's "unlimited" (a word > I've learned through experience to hate) then tell you "except for the kind > of stuff you're doing" and send a bill or shut you down. If you've got to > ship a ton of bandwidth, you should at least look into the alternatives.

It stuns me just _how_ bad it upcharges and how much it could be hurting their business. I can imagine so many use-cases where reasonably priced bandwidth would drive consumption elsewhere. I use cloud storage for backups without worrying about the insane cost of a restore. I could send large video production files to cloud storage, use cloud compute to produce renders and then download the processed files again without paying a multiple of the compute cost on bandwidth.

To illustrate a bit on that video example, 4K 422 ProRes HQ is 424 GB/hr [0]. Assuming I have say 2h of footage I want processed, that's 848GB. Then if I need say 2h on 2x g2.8xlarge GPU instances to process the video, that's $2.78 * 2 * 2 = $11.12 for the entire process. Then I need to download that 848GB again, that's $76.32. The cost of retrieving the processed data is 7x the cost of processing it, that's insane.

[0]: [https://ssl.apple.com/final-cut- pro/docs/Apple_ProRes_White_...](https://ssl.apple.com/final-cut- pro/docs/Apple_ProRes_White_Paper.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting that the solution doesn't change the problem at all. As far as I can tell, cdnjs doesn't pay Cloudflare either. So all the traffic still flows through Cloudflare, unpaid. Cloudflare is listed as a sponsor for cdnjs. Guess it just keeps the list of who CF subsidizes shorter.

<comment><USER8> Realistically, many legacy sites using this for rendering will just break and stay broken. Academic upload-and-forget posts, etc. Users may be unhappy but the overall volume of requests could drop.

Additionally, every sponsorship may have a fixed cost to someone in the organization, some manager who would rather read a 20 line vs. 100 line report. And I doubt mathematicians and physicists drive the CF bottom line. Generosity has its limits.

<comment><USER9> I thought the same thing regarding legacy sites. My workplace blocks file sharing and image hosting websites, so I've been acutely aware of the impact to UX recently when domains disappear. I can be almost certain now that when there are no images on a blog or stackoverflow post that they were hosted on imgur. I've been considering this for a while but it seems somewhat curious to me that not so long ago hotlinking was a big no-no and as sites disappeared broken image icons on small websites multiplied, and now we have an increasing number of CDNs where hotlinking is essentially the intended usage.

<comment><USER10> Have you asked what the justification is for allowing general internet sites but not image hosting sites? I can't imagine it's at all reasonable.

<comment><USER11> It's a fairly common rule in an enterprise. Unless you can guarantee that imgur will never host porn, it's going to get blocked per an HR policy.

<comment><USER10> But you can't guarantee that random blogs don't host porn either.

<comment><USER7> I believe it's mostly about legal liability vs actual effectiveness.

If someone watching porn causes someone else to file a hostile workplace suit, you can show that you invested in whatever is the standard off the shelf tech to prevent it.

It's all kind of silly today now that most people walk around work with 4g phones with high res screens. That leaves preventing malware on company PCs as the sole actual reasoning.

<comment><USER10> And why would the liability be different between random sites and imgur? I fully understand the idea of blocking both. I don't understand the idea of only blocking imgur.

<comment><USER7> It's meeting the legal definition of "reasonable care" to buy an industry standard blocking tool and maintain it with software updates.

The companies that use this software are checking boxes like "no porn", "no gambling". They aren't typically making URL level decisions. The stuff that sneaks by will happen because filtering isn't perfect.

The makers of the software categorize popular sites with tags (porn, file sharing, proxy avoidance, hate speech, etc). Less popular sites get content keyword filtering...so something like porn images without porn words can slip by.

<comment><USER9> This is a reasonable description of the internet filters we have. There is a lot more than just file sharing sites blocked, and they usually specify the category they are blocked under. The others just don't affect me as much. Though my above comment about IP paranoia still stands. We have other policies around access to email, USB permissions, bans of VM software etc purely to raise the bar above 'easy' leaks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a huge mess.

\- Only 1 month to re-route 70TB of content. I wonder if even over 10% will be re-routed, with all the other sites broken.

\- Cloudflare notice could have beem some months in. Hopefully now that this got some traction they will provide some more time.

\- There are a lot of situations where devs cannot change the CDN any longer. I for one won't trust CDNs (including CDNJS) for anything durable any longer, which seems a big loss for Cloudflare.

<comment><USER13> Worse, mathjax is very popular with statically generated sites. Any pelican or Jekyll website you see with maths probably has this CDN hardwired into it. I am involved with 2 projects where we hard wired it into our docs.

Worse, the full download is massive, so it's tempting to not local host it. There are some cryptic messages about reducing the size, which link to out of date pages. If they were going to do this, they could at least have decent docs on how to locally host in a small size.

<comment><USER14> It's right in the article, under the "Optimization" header.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there a way in which MathJax could redirect their cdn.mathjax.org to cdnjs.cloudflare.com and maintain backwards compatibility for existing sites?

A DNS redirect would break the SSL, right? Perhaps a HTTP 3xx redirect?

<comment><USER16> HTTP 3xx would work fine, but you would need an active server there. But really setting up nginx with such rules as basically the only thing it is doing to handle these requests on OVH or some other fairly unlimited bandwidth server shouldn't be too hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, yeah, ugh, why would a niche library (in the sense that it's not jQuery or YUI) need to operate its own CDN, for anything other than style points? There are major players who are already doing this who own and operate their own network (see MaxCDN). What's wrong with just plugging into their existing infrastructure?

If that fails, I'd give a shout to FDCServers or LeaseWeb (or of that capacity) and see what they can do. I know of a handful of people who've moved 100TB monthly for less than $100/month, just because they asked.

<comment><USER18> Why is this downvoted? Nitpicking of the phrase "niche library" aside, I'm having trouble understanding this without more context as well.

The post starts:

> Our CDN has been an important part of MathJax's history. When MathJax made > its first public release in 2010, hosting a library like MathJax was a > complex challenge. The CDN launched a year later and helped resolve this > difficulty

What is "like MathJax" alluding to? Standing up a web host to serve a single JS file sounds like the opposite of a "complex challenge", so there must be something else going on here.

After reading further down, I see that the post does mention that "A common concern with local installations is the size of a complete copy of MathJax, in particular the ~29,000 PNGs", so I guess that's what they're talking about? If so, the comments at the top make more sense and their having had their own CDN at all is more understandable in that light, but it seems needlessly confusing not to lead with that explanation.

<comment><USER17> Your guess is as good as mine. I edited my original post to reflect my subjectiveness of niche.

I guess my point was that... Okay, so they took advantage of CloudFlare. Great, plenty of people do that, but not on the scale of 10s of TBs. What plan were they on with CF? The $20/month one? If I was a provider, I wouldn't want someone moving that volume of data through my pipes for $20/month (but as a developer, I'd love it)

They mentioned how Google provided free storage. Storage is so cheap! Providers make their money on bandwidth. Having said, I can't imagine what kind of price they paid for bandwidth.

Like I alluded to in my (now edited) original post: Guys, it never hurts to do your research in the hosting space and learn that there is more to hosting than just AWS/Google/Azure/Heroku/OVH/DigitalOcean/Vultr. Go to webhostingtalk.com, learn a bit, browse the offers forums, write some emails, compare providers, ask questions. Hosting isn't complicated, especially compared to some of the problems you're/we're solving.

<comment><USER19> Let's say you don't care about DDOS protection and can live with 0.1x the number of PoPs. How much does it cost these days to host these terabytes/month from ≥10 well spread locations?

<comment><USER7> If you want to maintain the basic benefit of a CDN, the cheapest I know of is OVH's CDN. MathJax says they use 70TB/month.

The OVH 100TB CDN plan is £509.99/month. Other CDNs would be 3x that amount or more.

It wouldn't be available much cheaper even if you skipped the CDN. A $20 VPS comes with 3TB outbound, so you would need 24 of them to spread across.

Of course, there may be some opportunity to fix their cache headers, or optimize their js/CSS/images and reduce that 70TB requirement.

<comment><USER10> > A $20 VPS comes with 3TB outbound

You can get $40 servers with 30TB outbound.

<comment><USER7> I assume that's a 100mbps unmetered port, and probably not able to push 100% at peak times (over provisioned). How many of these would you need to serve the implied peaks that come with 70TB/month? And have them spread on at least 2 continents?

<comment><USER10> Gigabit port limited to 30TB. It should be able to handle the load patterns fine. That's from Hetzner. That's only one continent by itself, but that's a very significant chunk of the load solved with 1-2 servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have an old web site hosted by my university that has several math equations on it using MathJax. Unfortunately, since graduating, I no longer have access to it, but my professor still hosts all of past students' content for us.

I'm just glad that I had the foresight to have hosted my own copy of that library.

</comment><comment><USER21> I switched from MathJax to a middleman + execjs + KaTeX pipeline for my static sites earlier this year, and I'm very happy with it overall. KaTeX isn't 1-1 with MathJax when it comes to syntax support; I was surprised to see that underset and overset - which are ubiquitous - aren't supported. That said, I was able to work around every issue with alternative syntax. It's awesome that the heavy lifting is no longer client side, and it's a significantly easier build pipeline than MathJax if you're trying to generate a single minimized script or use webpack.

<comment><USER22> Is there a reason why ebooks don't use KaTeX? I subscribe to safaribooksonline.com, which presents HTML versions of ebooks. I think they're just unpackaged versions of epub or mobi versions. Anyway, I'm surprised that equations are generally embedded in images, even in recent (published this month) O'Reilly-published books.

Is there some technical reason why authors/publishers do it this way, or is it just about tooling?

Gitbook claims that it works: [https://www.gitbook.com/blog/features/katex](https://www.gitbook.com/blog/features/katex)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Github code search for 'script src "cdn.mathjax.org"':

> 1,811,496 code results.

Woof.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's kind of strange to think that you need fewer of your own server resources the more successful your software is at meeting its goals, but this seems to be one of those cases.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is there any way to make Sphinx use its own copy of the script rather than the CDN?

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if BuiltWith would be willing to release a list for free of sites using MathJax, so someone could build a tool to notify them all if contact info can be found

</comment><comment><USER27> I just noticed this last week. I was trying to work out how to use MathJax directly from within JS to render math inline with rendering the rest of my content, rather than asynchronously after the fact.

I love MathJax, but I'm now rendering math on the server using a latex -> dvisvgm pipeline and caching the results

<comment><USER28> Depending on your use case, KaTeX [1] may be worth a look. It has a "renderToString" function that returns an HTML string.

[1] [https://khan.github.io/KaTeX](https://khan.github.io/KaTeX)

<comment><USER29> One problem of KaTeX is that its feature set is too small. It doesn't even support some very basic commands such as \overrightarrow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> MathJax is such a great thing. Paired with simple markdown it really helps me structuring all my study work, sharing is so much easier with HTML files than TEX files. So sad to see the CDN go. Also: Hey Google, wanna do something really great? Sponsor them! _wink_

<comment><USER31> _Hey Google, wanna do something really great? Sponsor them! wink_

Better yet, add native MathML support to Chrome, and help eliminate the need for MathJax altogether. In the meantime, sponsoring MathJax would be a Good Thing though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Jupyter Notebooks containing maths and exported as html are also going to get affected. I personally write my articles in a Jupyter Notebook and export them to html and put them on my site so need to update a few of them.

</comment><comment><USER33> I thought cloudflare didn't have a data cap? I'm somewhat concerned.

<comment><USER7> See [https://www.cloudflare.com/terms](https://www.cloudflare.com/terms)

Specifically, SECTION 10: LIMITATION ON NON-HTML CACHING.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Lots of products become popular when they are actually announced here as shutting down :)

</comment><comment><USER35> I read that as MaxCDN shutting down.

</comment><comment><USER36> > We recommend cdnjs which uses CloudFlare for delivery

Oh man, so close to

> We recommend cjdns (which is against everything CloudFlare stands for) for > delivery

<comment><USER37> > which is against everything CloudFlare stands for

Could you explain this? Have I missed some big Cloudflare news?

<comment><USER38> cjdns is a different thing from cdnjs

<comment><USER37> Thanks, I thought it was a typo.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Woz collects his Galaxy Nexus early from Google - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/11/18/the-woz-collects-his-galaxy-nexus-early-from-google-hq/ <comment><USER2> Years ago, he paid for a site license for one of my small shareware projects when he only needed a single copy. I was so happy. I heart woz.

</comment><comment><USER3> Woz's coolness and enthusiasm knows no bounds - and he is probably a bit more relaxed about it now that the other Steve won't be going nuts about it :)

( I remember not so long ago Woz said something good about Android and then retracted afterwards! )

</comment><comment><USER4> Woz is a real technologist. He loves hardware and software. I really admire him.

<comment><USER5> Once again, I must post the link to Jessica Livingston's full, extraordinary interview of Steve Wozniak. In case someone has not yet grokked it.

<http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html>

<comment><USER6> Love that interview, especially his brilliant hack to create color.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He must have a stack of phones and tablets a mile high in his backyard.

</comment><comment><USER8> I hope that some day I can be as great a man as Woz. Everything I read about him just leaves me with a grin a mile wide.

<comment><USER9> Great, or big? :)

The picture with Woz and the big chocolate donut in the background made me smile :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is a little ironic that Steve had camped outside a store and was basically ignored by Apple to buy an iPhone 4S and was captured by a legion of Google admirers when trying to buy a Galaxy Nexus. People of Apple, this is Woz. Atleast let the man go in and take a picture, for gods sake.

<comment><USER11> I remember hearing him say in an interview, if he wanted the device early Apple would've gave it to him, but he wanted to queue up at an Apple store on launch day because it was more exciting that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think Woz might actually be Santa Claus.

</comment><comment><USER13> guys this is basically a useless comment but I really admire Woz. In the hope that he might stop by this thread (don't know if he reads hacker news or not), I just wanted to say "thanks for everything!", I really like the guy!

Now, it would be really cool if he wrote a review of Android ICS from his point of view...

</comment><comment><USER14> I would PAY Verizon to take my money and sell me a Nexus. Come on!

</comment><comment><USER15> how & why does this make the front page?

<comment><USER9> Mostly because of Apple's (or let's say Steve Jobs') attitude of "Android is crap, they stole everything from us, they are scum and need to be exterminated". Many Apple "fans" also have the same attitude. So it is great to see a man who founded the company just go over there to check out the latest phone they have done, knowing that technological progress is never coming from just one company.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I publish Heartbleed statistics? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN, I've modified some public exploit code to scan a list of HTTPS hosts and calculate simple statistics. None of the data that the exploit retrieves is logged. I've run it on one list of hosts with OpenSSL/1.0.1 in their Server header, and am in the process of scanning a larger, more statistically significant list of assorted HTTPS hosts. The OpenSSL hosts have a 42% vulnerability rate. :( I made this with the intent of creating a "heartbleed monitor" website, but all of my friends tell me I'll go to jail if I publish these results. Do any of you have thoughts/advice? Thanks, Anonymous for now <comment><USER2> You cannot go to jail because you've scanned for a vulnerability. Also, others have compiled lists [https://github.com/musalbas/heartbleed- masstest/blob/master/...](https://github.com/musalbas/heartbleed- masstest/blob/master/top10000.txt).

<comment><USER3> Without knowing OP's jurisdiction this seems irresponsible. IANAL and OP, you should probably speak to one, but pen testing without permission can absolutely be illegal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the US.

I guess it wasn't a very good idea to post this question. Its definitely illegal; I was "accessing a computer without prior authorization" (to paraphrase CFAA) to steal data, albeit with the best of intentions. But its good to know that I wouldn't be the first to publish, and that gist is much more brazen than what I was planning (which was just stats and trends.)

I'm going to think long and hard about whether I publish this. I can't really afford to speak to a lawyer. If its that close a call, I'll air on the cautious side.

Thank you both for the assistance, its appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've no idea, but I think having a verbose server header like that indicates an indifference to security already....</comment>


AMD "Never Settle" Bundle Gets Updated With New AAA Titles - <AUTHOR> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/amd_%E2%80%9Cnever_settle%E2%80%9D_bundle_gets_updated_new_aaa_titles123

<comment><USER2> That is a good deal!</comment>


Show HN: An app that transforms your phone into an iPod - <AUTHOR> https://testflight.apple.com/join/1BHkrtFP <comment><AUTHOR> Video Demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbCfWC2GthI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbCfWC2GthI)

Website: [https://retromusic.co](https://retromusic.co)

Hey guys!

Retro brings back the magic of having full control over your music––inspired by the design of the iPod. Why would we want that? I don't know, but nostalgia hits us hard at the weirdest of times and sometimes there's harmony in it.

We've been spoiled with Spotify/Apple Music. Being able to have all your songs in one place is a godsend and is something we take for granted every day. I don't want to take that away and currently you can control/sync Apple Music with Retro.

You can theme the app to really make it yours. Right now I've made a few skins that you can select within the app (as seen in the video). You can also change the wheel color.

Retro is 100% free to use and will always be.

For updates, feel free to follow me on twitter! [https://twitter.com/sakofchit](https://twitter.com/sakofchit)

<comment><USER2> What was it like developing in flutter?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's awesome! Highly recommend working with it if you're aiming for efficiency. There's also plenty of packages that help speed up development</comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Adobe Blank - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2013/03/introducing-adobe-blank.html

<comment><USER2> tl;dr: It is a fall-back font of which every glyph is zero width. It can be, for example, used as a substitute font while the actual web font loads; the text width of zero indicates that the web font is yet to be loaded.

<comment><USER3> This seems like a whole lot of effort for nothing. Why not just use the onerror callback of an image to check if it's loaded?

<comment><USER4> Because "an image" is not the webfont you're actually interested in maybe?

<comment><USER3> You're not using an actual image, just an image object. Set the src attribute of the image object to the URL of the webfont and the browser will call the onerror callback when it finishes loading.

See here:

<http://stackoverflow.com/a/5371426>

<comment><USER5> Just because a font has "loaded" does not mean it's ready to be used. This very problem makes it hard to load @font-face fonts on demand in <canvas> apps as there is a certain amount of time you must wait for the font to actually load that is not exposed or accounted for in any browser APIs. Even if you include a font in @font-face with a data: URI, you cannot immediately start using it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Saw the title and thought it was an early April fools. Got ready to comment how knowing adobe even an app showing just a blank screen would be full of tons of security vulnerabilities and need biweekly updates.

<comment><USER7> That was my first thought to but skimmed it and sounded like there might be some uses for it. Then reached the link at the bottom "this font was built using only AFDKO tools" and immediately thought that AFD stood for "April Fools Day", I had been fooled, and clicking the liked would just be a page explaining the joke. I couldn't figure out what the KO could stand for though so I clicked and turned out the abbreviation was just for "Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The terrible kerning makes this font barely readable.

<comment><USER9> What? It has great keming!

<comment><USER10> Very dean and modem.

<comment><USER11> Flatter than flat.

<comment><USER12> Not sure if Serif or Sans, though...

<comment><USER13> it is sans, obviously. a font without serifs (and this one has definetly no serifs) can not be serif.

<comment><USER14> I would've gone with "monospace", but I guess I can't argue with your approach...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm interested in the technique suggested for font loading. As an exercise I just created a font containing a single character at zero width. The resulting file size is considerably smaller than Blank (1440 bytes, versus 80k) which makes it nicer to inline, but should be able to serve the same purpose for font loading:

Create a span containing the character, with the font family referring to the font being loaded and the empty font (inlined in the css) and when the width is non-zero the font is loaded.

<comment><USER16> the generalized form of this technique (which you can also use to see if somebody has a font installed locally) is to basically create two rules:

        .load-base { font-family: comicsans-ms, verdana; }
        .load-test { font-family: fancyfont, comicsans-ms, verdana; }

and periodically check that the width of a line of nonsense text for both classes is not the same. Blank has the obvious benefit that it will be obvious when 0 != something else, but you can do it if you have some reasonable expectation that some other common font will exist with different metrics than your fancy font.

interesting to see the process behind the font, though.

<comment><USER15> As you say, if you know that the font you're loading has different metrics this approach will work, but if you have to make that sort of assumption it's not a generalised approach.

If you know that one font has zero width dimensions and one does not, then it greatly simplifies matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What does "All code points are rendered using a non-spacing and non-marking glyph." mean?

<comment><USER18> It means any and all text rendered in it is gonna be blank and take no space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's an interesting issue with invisible fonts that hasn't been pointed out in the comments thus far.

In a job interview last year, I was asked to name some ways to hide an element on a page. I think I came up with seven or eight ways and listed upsides and downsides of each.

Besides obvious ones like opacity, visibility, display: none, z-index, moving the elements off-screen, setting font-size to 0, etc., one idea I came up with on the spot was to design a font with blank characters in case the div was simply text. The text would be visible to search engines but not to users.

(Since I was interviewing at a large search company, I also raised the point that they might want to start analyzing custom fonts to make sure they're not simply empty characters, if they're not already.)

<comment><USER15> The issue isn't unique to invisible fonts - in all the cases you mentioned the text would be visible to search engines but not users.

<comment><USER20> I don't think the GP made the claim that the issue was unique in that way; just that it is another way that such a phenomena can happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The blog post is about a new font. I see no use of it on the page. And there's not even a picture of it in the blog post.

That's a really bad way to introduce it.

Or am I missing something? (I'm on Mac OSX 10.8, Chrome 26)

<comment><USER22> You wanted a picture of a zero-width font? One could argue that there were an infinite number of pictures of that font in use on that page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _'Adobe Blank'_

So they finally ran out of names for new products. It had to happen some day.

</comment><comment><USER24> _lol_ DDoS by Hackers News is a common curse for small websites. But "Error establishing a database connection" for only 16 points on Hackers News is a shame for Adobe.

<comment><USER25> Loading fine at 23. Perhaps you experienced an edge case load? Did a simple refresh fix it? Either way, performance seems totally fine on my end.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which Startups open-source their tech stack? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
How do statups go about when building a tech product that would bring an idea to life?
I would like to know if there are some startups that open-source their entire stack. I would like to see building blocks for their web/mobile applications.
I have checked https://stackshare.io/, but it is high-level for me, I'd love to how people put code together.
Some (Small) startups I came across:
- RASA: https://github.com/RasaHQ/rasa - MapZen: https://github.com/mapzen/
Could you please share some links of an open source stack (for a product). <comment><USER2> Project-A open sourced their BI infrastructure under the Mara brand: [https://github.com/mara](https://github.com/mara)

Repo: [https://github.com/mara/data-integration](https://github.com/mara/data- integration)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think Tailscale does this the right way - open sources as much as possible, without exposing everything. That being said, they are targeting the sysadmin/hacker market, which disproportionately appreciates (and potentially expects) software to be open source.

Repo: [https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale](https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale)</comment>


Ask PG: when will be winter YC 2011 application/interview deadlines? - <AUTHOR>

Will they be earlier than previous year, the same way summer 2010 deadlines are? <comment><USER2> Why wait until winter ? You can still apply 'late': <http://news.ycombinator.com/apply>

<comment><AUTHOR> Personal reasons + the logistics gets a bit harder if You are in Europe and have to travel for interviews, etc.</comment></comment>


Marissa Mayer launches Lumi Labs, a new incubator - <AUTHOR> http://www.lumilabs.com <comment><AUTHOR> "Thinking about what's next, I returned to my roots, rented the original Google office where I started my career, and founded a lab with my longtime friend and teammate @eamunozt. A bit of info: lumilabs.com"

[https://twitter.com/marissamayer/status/986716678682587136?s...](https://twitter.com/marissamayer/status/986716678682587136?s=21)</comment>


Salary negotiation for engineers - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/patio11/status/57802968568840192 <comment><AUTHOR> The five tweets:

1) Salary negotiation for engineers in 5 tweets: Never, ever reveal past salary information or your salary floor. #salarynegotiation

2) Every number in your contract is subject to negotiation. Hear otherwise? They're lying for advantage. #salarynegotiation

3) We are all businessmen here. Insecurity will not be rewarded with karma. Competency will not be viewed as greed. #salarynegotiation

4) Always have a counteroffer. Always have an option to walk away from the negotiation. #salarynegotiation

5) It is a seller's market now for talent. If they don't budge, firm handshake and wish them well in their search. #salarynegotiation

<comment><USER2> I'm glad you liked it. Would you like a blog post on this general topic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. Would love to read more about your thoughts on negotiating contracts.

<comment><USER2> OK dokey, I'll put it on the queue.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Captain401 (YC S15) Wants to Make Creating a 401k Easier for Businesses - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/30/yc-backed-captain401-wants-to-make-creating-a-401k-easier-for-businesses/ <comment><USER2> Having done this for a small biz (<20 employees) recently a couple of comparison points:

a) We spent about $5000 to set up with an attorney.

b) It's a !@%!@ nightmare to deal with the guy, with the taxes, etc. I would estimate 20 - 40 hours of set-up time for me, 1hr a month of ongoing paperwork and administration.

c) It's at LEAST $2500/yr to administer with the variety of little fees.

d) It's not straightforward for employees.

So suffice to say at $90/mo + $4 per this is a compelling offer.

Don't see anything specific about a "switching" opportunity - get yourselves a "switch to us" landing page and send me the link :)

<comment><USER3> Oh wow! That sounds terrible. Would love to hear from you: [https://captain401.com/join](https://captain401.com/join)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just my 2 cents. The really exciting part about what you are doing is making 401Ks easier for businesses.

The really scary thing is this whole page - [https://captain401.com/investment- philosophy](https://captain401.com/investment-philosophy)

I for one don't want a startup investing my retirement fund. I just want to see a list of names that I know (Vanguard, Goldman Sachs...) that I can choose from. If you are providing regular funds as options I would make this abundantly clear and I would push your own investment strategy to the backburner. The core value-add that you are offering is making 401Ks easier for businesses.

<comment><USER5> Totally agree. Setting up a 401(k) seems hard and I'd love help. Picking the right investment fund might also be hard, but placing my savings under the management of a relative stranger feels very uncomfortable.

In a world where Bernie Madoff existed, it'd be almost irresponsible to invest retirement savings with a startup. That being said, WealthFront and Betterment are basically startups, but they seem to be at a different level of maturity.

Of course, I'm not sure how objective my perception is. Would a more credible looking website be all the difference?

<comment><USER3> Just to clarify, all index funds are managed by Vanguard, and employees who want to choose their own investment allocation are free to do so. However, for the majority of employees that need help with their investing strategy, we use the same investing principles as Wealthfront and Betterment to make sure they're globally diversified and automatically rebalanced. Also, all funds are held in an SIPC-insured secure trust account by one of the nation's largest third party custodians that deals with billions of dollars -- we never touch the money ourselves.

<comment><USER4> When I signed up for my most recent 401K, there was a really slimy Edward Jones dude pushing some fund they called the "perfect retirement fund for a mid 30 year old" or something to that effect. As soon as I asked about management fees he bumbled around and started talking about the other funds they offered. Its going to be really tough to differentiate yourself as the "best investors". Differentiate yourselves on "best 401K platform" its much lower hanging fruit is all I'm saying. Once people are in the platform use historic performance to help them make the best decisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a much needed service! At Standard Treasury we set up a 401k (no matching, we're a poor startup) through Zenefits, which ended up connecting with [https://www.myubiquity.com/](https://www.myubiquity.com/) (formerly theonline401k.com). Ubiquity has an unpleasant and unintuitive user interface, poor support, etc. I'm really glad to see a YC company taking on this space, it's worthy of attack.

</comment><comment><USER7> > Some companies like Fidelity don't work with small businesses.

This is true and something we set out to fix at Justworks. Because we are a PEO we have tons of small customers that get access to 401k much earlier in their life cycle as a business than they would otherwise. For instance, we have some 2 person startups using Fidelity funds (as well as Vanguard etc.). The space is definitely ready for some innovation, though, so it's nice to see a YC company working on it.

</comment><comment><USER8> When they were on HN a few weeks ago I did not know they were a YC company.

I see another poster mentioned myubiquity.com which I was just looking at yesterday. One thing that stood out for me there is the questionnaire that a startup plan can go through to setup a plan. Gives them things they need to think about if they haven't already.

Best of luck Captain401! I like the use of the Vanguard index funds. We use those a lot (and in Vanguard managed trusts) and think that is a great decision to go with.

I just applied for the fellowship with an idea that leverages the 401(k) as a distribution channel for automated financial planning. Basically a portal that aims to deliver "financial wellness" to participants that combines budgeting, calculators, savings goals, facilitation of insurance and wills, etc. The portal would be offered to RIAs and plan sponsors as an add on service to their existing 401(k) service.

I hope that by getting better advice to people that addresses their current situation and their goals that we can help them form good financial habits. Retirement is the end goal but getting the people that live paycheck-to- paycheck a solid foundation right now will help them better be able to save down the line.

</comment><comment><USER9> Assuming a company doesn't match their employee's 401k, what is the cost for a company to offer a 401k, traditionally, and what is the approx cost using Captain401?

<comment><USER8> From my experience costs for a 401(k) can be all over the board and the larger the plan the less the fees will be as a percentage of assets. I've seen as low as 20 bps and as high as 100 bps. The fees usually involve an advisor fee, a recordkeeper fee, and a custody and trust fee. A lot of providers provide all three services and bundle that into one fee. Some advisors use third party recordkeepers and a separate custodian and then all three parties bill separately.

Some companies will hit participant assets for all fees for the plan and then end up paying nothing themselves. I really dislike that practice as it kind of takes a lot of the benefit out of the benefit. :)

<comment><USER10> Employee Fiduciary is at 8 bps: [http://www.employeefiduciary.com/401k-plan- pricing/](http://www.employeefiduciary.com/401k-plan-pricing/)

Don't know if they would come out lower than Captain401 though (no mention of any cut of the overall assets on the Captain401 page, if that's correct, they're very likely lower priced).

<comment><USER8> That is definitely lower than I have seen (edit: for mid-sized plans at least). Thank you for bringing that to my attention.

Is that advisory only? I don't see any mention of that including recordkeeping and custodial services in that fee but do see them on another page.

<comment><USER10> I don't have anything to do with the plan (just keeping my head up about how the business runs :) ), but from the FAQ ([http://www.employeefiduciary.com/401k-faq/](http://www.employeefiduciary.com/401k-faq/)) it looks like they use a third party (MG Trust) for custodial services, paying them out of the asset based fee they already charge. Nearly certain that the recordkeeping is included (we're using it anyways), so the fees listed may in fact cover everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _The 401k is tied to a Vanguard fund, which Lee says ultimately leads to higher performance than other funds. ..._

So there's only one (1) fund to available? I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but, if that's the case, what's the reasoning behind this?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for pointing that out -- we're hoping TechCrunch will fix this shortly.

Our 401k actually offers dozens of Vanguard funds, and companies can even customize the investment options if they wish.

<comment><USER12> Can individuals customize their investments as well or is it all set at the company level?

<comment><USER13> Individuals are free to invest in any of the low-fee Vanguard index funds we include in our plan as they wish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't see an explicit mention on taking on the fiduciary role or not (there's a "taking care of compliance" mention as part of "Automated Administration"). A company I've considered (forusall.com) explicitly calls this out as "We take on the fiduciary role". If you're doing the same, it'd be great to make it clear!

</comment><comment><USER14> What is the setup and/or recordation fee? The monthly fee is certainly competitive (and IIUC, I like that unlike ForUsAll you're not charging some sort of additional management fee), but I'd want to know what the upfront cost is.

</comment><comment><USER15> My understanding was that employers have fiduciary obligations to their employees when they setup a 401k plan - does offloading 401k administration remove those obligations or transfer them to Captain401?

<comment><USER8> I cannot speak for Captain401 but employers (the plan sponsor) can transfer their fiduciary duty to their investment advisor by electing 3(38) services rather than the standard 3(21) services. That doesn't remove all of the obligations of a sponsor but does remove their fiduciary duty on investment selection and monitoring. The advisor usually does charge an extra fee for this but I think it is going to be a standard thing very soon as employers prefer to offload that liability.

Finally a topic on HN that I can speak about!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Was just looking for something like this. Will definitely hit you up!

</comment><comment><USER17> "The 401k is tied to dozens of Vanguard index funds"

Would be great if someone would offer self-directed 401k plans. In theory, they exist, but in practice, they're nowhere to be found.

<comment><USER8> A lot of plans (well, a growing number) are now offering a self-directed brokerage account so that participants can opt out of the preselected investment options and pick their own. You should ask your H.R. department about adding that as an option.

<comment><USER17> As luck would have it, I have asked HR ;)

They have no clue what self-directed means, who to contact at the 401k provider, and aren't really interested in making more work for themselves. Simply getting some paperwork forwarded along to the provider took a couple of months. Unless you're a C-level exec, it ain't gonna happen.

<comment><USER8> I think you are onto something there. I feel like it usually is the C-level exec that feels he can out perform both the advisor's models and the market in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Congrats on launching!</comment>


College fires IT admin, loses access to Google email,successfully sues for $250k - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/18/school_fires_sues_it_admin/ <comment><USER2> [Reddit discussion] [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5okiu9/fired_it_e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5okiu9/fired_it_employee_offered_to_unlock_data_for/)

[Link from Reddit] [http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/01/17/after-his- firi...](http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/01/17/after-his-firing- employee-unlock-data-200000/96487962/)</comment>


Ask HN: Tech blog – Why to do it and what to write about? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I am trying to build a technical blog, and I would like to know what do people expect and what write about. Do I need to share experiments ?. I am a backend engineer with focus on Data engineering. Do you have any recommendations, or examples ? <comment><USER2> I think it comes down to what you want to achieve

I have a tech blog as my tech notebook. After years of loosing notebooks Ive found a blog the best solution to this.

So when I solve a problem I will write it up and then if its useful to others then fine

</comment><comment><USER3> Keep it simple. Just write about things that you find interesting. It could be a new library/tool/framework that you used/built or how you solved a particular problem. What you genuinely find interesting is likely to be useful for other developers as well. E.g. I maintain this blog: [https://blog.amirathi.com/](https://blog.amirathi.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Building a technical blog answers the question "How?" I think you want to focus on "Why?" What is it that you want to achieve? Do you want to become famous, become seen by a group as an expert, make money? Think about the "Why?" and the "What?" should become a bit more obvious.</comment>


Elon Musk tweeted new Grasshopper test - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGimzB5QM1M&feature=youtu.be

<comment><USER2> Did someone flag this? Why is on page 3 when it has 14 points after 4 hours and it's a pretty epic technology demo?</comment>


Carnegie Mellon Decision Analysis Midterm Grading Procedure [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~sbaugh/midterm_grading_function.pdf <comment><USER2> Terrence Tao had a blogpost about this "How to assign partial credit on an exam of true-false questions?"

[https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/how-to-assign- part...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/how-to-assign-partial- credit-on-an-exam-of-true-false-questions/)</comment>


Py a la Node: running python code in node.js - <AUTHOR> http://neversaw.us/2010/5/20/py-a-la-node/

<comment><USER2> There's also an interesting concept in the NodeJS community called dnode. There's no python lib for it yet though (ruby and perl exist).

<https://github.com/substack/dnode></comment>


Font Awesome 4.6 released – accessibility improvements and 23 new icons - <AUTHOR> https://articles.fortawesome.com/font-awesome-4-6-released-d7213342698a <comment><USER2> This is great. There is a slowly growing emphasis on accessibility in the web, and tools like this make it just a little bit easier!

Tangentially, anyone with good resources for WCAG (and probably ADA, in the near future) compliance, I would love any help.</comment>


Show HN: Trying to design a news website as a houseplant video game - <AUTHOR> https://waavg.vlaaaaad.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I got curious about the way games provide fun, and whether that fun can be ported into use cases like news and discussion websites.

During this exploration, I arrived at some thoughts around user interface[0] and user experience[1], and built a simple prototype[2] to show these thoughts in action.

I'm debating to continue this hobby research - anyone out there interested in gamification & want to exchange notes / keep each other updated?

\--

[0]Buttons, scrolling, and clicking can be abstracted using game assets, camera system, and fun gestures [https://waavg.vlaaaaad.com/#ui](https://waavg.vlaaaaad.com/#ui)

[1]For play to happen, a design needs progression loops, choices with consequences, and aesthetic feedback [https://waavg.vlaaaaad.com/#ux](https://waavg.vlaaaaad.com/#ux)

[2]The mechanics of a news website (topics & comments) were used to build a digital houseplant simulation game [https://waavg- demo.vlaaaaad.com/demo](https://waavg-demo.vlaaaaad.com/demo)</comment>


Amok 1.1.0 released (live code editing for browsers) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/caspervonb/amok/releases/tag/v1.1.0

<comment><AUTHOR> Gist of the release, it enables connection sharing with third party tools like chrome developer tools or firefox developer tools.</comment>


My triple screen set-up for effective online presentations - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/07/my-triple-screen-set-up-for-effective-online-presentations/ <comment><USER2> I have seen some of my coworkers with portrait orientation monitors. On the odd occasion that I've tried it, I liked how documents and web pages fit so nicely, as well as chat clients. But after a while, I realize how much strain I'm placing on my neck. My suspicion is I'm using a wrong window placement or using it for the wrong thing.

Anyone who's happy with their portrait monitor setup - what do you use yours for, and how do you arrange your applications on it?</comment>


Quick and easy way to measure power consumption - <AUTHOR> http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2012/may/the-quick-and-easy-way-to-measure-power-consumption.html <comment><USER2> Can anyone find a link to the actual product?

The only clue appears to be: "The new metering device will be presented at the Sensor+Test 2012 trade fair in Nuremberg from 22 to 24 May"

<comment><USER3> This is typical of HN submissions that link to fraunhofer.de: they misrepresent some impractical or extremely speculative idea as something practical or a finished product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nothing new - hall effect systems have been on the market for years

[http://sensing.honeywell.com/index.php?ci_id=3108&la_id=...](http://sensing.honeywell.com/index.php?ci_id=3108&la_id=1&pr_id=4938)</comment>


Obama administration: "Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/obama-administration-piracy-is-flat-unadulterated-theft.ars

<comment><USER2> I hate it when people equate piracy with theft...it's copyright infringement, not theft. If someone breaks into my car and steals my iPod, that's theft. I, the original owner, no longer possess the item.

If instead the "thief" breaks into my car and copies all of the music from my iPod (let's say that all of the songs are recordings of my band to make things simple) and posts it on several torrent trackers, that's piracy (copyright infringement). I still have the originals, so no harm, no foul. In fact, I might be glad that someone is doing some free marketing for my band (or I might choose to cry about the billions in lost sales).

I'd argue that piracy has done more to help the music industry than it has to hurt it. Back when people bought music on $17 CD's, they only bought a handful per year. And once you lost a CD or it got scratched, you stopped listening to it. You could also only carry 6 at a time in your CD changer. With illegal MP3 downloads (and later, legal ones), people could suddenly carry thousands of songs in their pockets, and they never get lost or scratched.

Back in college, since music was now "free", my friends and I expanded our musical tastes beyond gangsta rap to include rock, country, trance, techno, classical, and jazz. With a new world of music open to us, we started going to local jazz clubs, raves, and concerts (which put more money in the record labels' pockets than CD sales ever did). I went to 2 Rage Against the Machine concerts in one weekend, even though I've never paid for one of their albums.

Just the other day I listened to the first MP3 I ever downloaded (August, 1998, Eagle-Eye Cherry - Save Tonight). I backed up all of my old MP3's on CD-R back in the day, and they've been passed from desktop to laptop to XBox to iPod to phone ever since.

Since all of these songs are always instantly available to me, these artists are still within reach, even the one-hit-wonders from yesteryear. If I hadn't downloaded Fastball's "Outta My Head" back in 1998, I would never have gone to see them perform at the Viper Room in 2008 (it was the illegal download of a B-side that made me appreciate them more than hearing "The Way" on the radio).

<comment><USER3> | Since all of these songs are always instantly available | to me, these artists are still within reach, even the | one-hit-wonders from yesteryear. If I hadn't downloaded | Fastball's "Outta My Head" back in 1998, I would never | have gone to see them perform at the Viper Room in 2008 | (it was the illegal download of a B-side that made me | appreciate them more than hearing "The Way" on the | radio).

While that may be true that the piracy had an unintended benefit for the band. I think you're making an appeal to the fallacy "the ends justify the means".

In this case, the record label and by extension the employees of the record label lost out on their share of the $1 you should arguably have spent on the track. (assuming an itunes download at approximately market price).

So that works out to say $0.80 cents not paid to the workers at the store, the marketing department etc...

In the end, the band might have benefitted on balance, but in an alternative scenario, you _PAID_ for that song, liked it and still went to see the band at the Viper room.

I'm fully aware that there are a number of people who violently disagree with me on this. In my own opinion, the question of whether it's "better for the music industry overall" or not is irrelevant. The people who own the rights to the music, own the right to decide whether it's OK to get the song for free or not. If that costs them a customer at the viper room in 2008, it's their choice.

"Theft plain and simple" is probably an overstatement - but (again, in my opinion) - there is definitely some moral ambiguity to this.

Let's imagine that for some reason at YC11 a band shows up. In their pitch meeting PG and team feel suitably Rocked and Rolled so he decides to throw in the seed money for their studio time. The terms are that YC gets to keep 80% of the money from record sales (come to think of it, this happened on an episode of Dragon's Den UK).

You download the song. Go to the concert. What happens to the share owned by YC? Do they make money? Do they deserve money?

I do understand where you're coming from... but I also disagree.

<comment><USER2> _In this case, the record label and by extension the employees of the record label lost out on their share of the $1 you should arguably have spent on the track. (assuming an itunes download at approximately market price)._

The year was 1998, and there was no iTunes. My only other alternative was to buy the full CD at $12-17. As a poor college student, I could only afford to buy maybe 3 CD's a year, and Fastball's album would not have been one of them. I would therefore never have heard the song (or paid for it) and never would have gone to the Viper room.

<comment><USER3> Then so be it.

You're using a post-hoc justification of the end result to claim that the piracy was acceptable.

It wasn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the article: _Locke then lamented the fate of songwriters. "Recently, I've had a chance to read letters from award winning writers and artists whose livelihoods have been destroyed by music piracy. One letter that stuck out for me was a guy who said the songwriting royalties he had depended on to 'be a golden parachute to fund his retirement had turned out to be a lead balloon.' This just isn't right."_

I don't believe the assumption that every download is a lost sale is remotely true. It's also possible that many downloads led to increased sales or that the downloader already owned a copy of or access to the media and was just getting it in digital form for convenience.

If I download the mp3 copy of a CD I own a physical copy of, am I a criminal? Did I steal from the artist?

<comment><USER2> _If I download the mp3 copy of a CD I own a physical copy of, am I a criminal? Did I steal from the artist?_

To the first question, I would say that you are guilty of copyright infringement. Compare it to buying a bootleg DVD of a DVD that you already own that was scratched and is now unplayable, or sneaking in to watch the re- release of Avatar now that you own it on Blu-Ray.

To the second, no you haven't stolen anything from the artist, since the artist (well, really the record label) still has the original item.

<comment><USER5> How could he be guilty of copyright infringement when courts have ruled it is legal to have a digital backup of your media? If he copied the mp3s from a friend who ripped the CD as a short-cut, would you still see him as guilty of piracy?

I'm sorry, but that viewpoint is ludicrous, but I'm sure the RIAA loves that they've wired people to feel that way. Makes their extortion much easier.

(And, yes, I do believe in paying for the music I listen to.)

<comment><USER6> Because the law believes that bits have colour: <http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23>

I'm not sure if this exact issue has been litigated, probably because the copyright holders would really rather not even discuss the issue, and it isn't the problem anyhow. A strict reading of the laws involved definitely show it's copyright infringement, but one could reasonably argue the appropriate damages for the act should be a flat $0. One can reasonably counterargue too, though. Something along the line of "Well, then they should have bought a second copy", though the problem with that is then you have to defend how when it is disadvantageous to the customer for it to be considered a strictly physical product, we consider it that way, but when it is disadvantageous to the customer to treat it as an abstract intellectual good, we treat it that way too. However, that's only a logical contradiction, not a legal one. This is probably why this has (to the best of my knowledge) never been litigated, even a victory of the case could set a precedent they wouldn't want. Best for them to just keep this out of court.

<comment><USER7> I kind-of agree with the idea of no damages -- where I assume you mean compensation to the aggrieved party -- and instead a fine (or other punishment) for illegal activity, collected and kept by the government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I knew that this was the position the administration would have once chose Joe Biden as VP. Frankly I'm amazed that they haven't attempted more to date with copyright enforcement.

See [http://www.betanews.com/article/Where-does-Joe-Biden- stand-o...](http://www.betanews.com/article/Where-does-Joe-Biden-stand-on- technology-issues/1219872202) for a quick overview of Biden's background on copyright issues.

<comment><USER4> Biden was one of the few Senators I knew by name before he was VP. I was also concerned about how his views on copyright would affect the stance of the current Administration.

Here's more on the history of Biden's pro-copyright campaign.

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Piracy is not stealing, not a serious crime, it is a different thing, and with untruth statements like this you are doing a bad favor to the industry.

I'm an author myself,and I see that as "the Prohibition in the United States". Exaggeration to this problem could backfire.

Copyright has been extended so much that is a flagrant abuse +70years from authors dead when it was 25 years from creation like a invention patent means a lot of people could seriously object to it, and win.

Is drawing Mickie Mouse a crime just because the corporations lobbied for it?

95% of the US population do and will pirate in their lives. Criminalization of piracy and sex means anybody could go to jail(it is so easy to put pirate cds in your enemy home and call police).

This population vote Obama and they could make him jobless on the blink of an eye. No matter what Obama says, if 90% of the people think something should be permitted(like drawing Mickie or copying a Beatles song they have payed four times) in a democracy, that is Law. If the president oppose, he can go home.

</comment><comment><USER10> I keep telling myself, this _has_ to be better than if we'd elected McCain -- right?

<comment><USER11> Back in 1999, there were a lot of people who took the position of "Doesn't matter if it's Gore or Bush, they're both just as bad." I'm pretty sure no one who had that sentiment before still holds that notion.

It's a lot better than if we elected McCain/Palin, yes.

<comment><USER12> While I'm no fan of George W. Bush, it's hard to hypothesize about a past that never happened. So while not many people have that sentiment today, that's only because we picked one and didn't get to see what the other would've done.

<comment><USER11> While sometimes it's hard to hypothesize, there are other times when you've done enough research on the topic to make a very astute guess.

I imagine that, by now, you've read The Onion's absurdly prescient "Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'" from January 17, 2001 -- [http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national- nigh...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of- peace-and-pros,464/)

Maybe I have different ideals than the original poster that I replied to, but I feel confident in saying that yes, we are better off not having elected McCain/Palin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've seen citations that the common law requires the property to be "tangible" for theft or larceny to have occurred. In the legal, British definition, however, this is not required.

Calling piracy "theft" doesn't require considering whether piracy results in lost sales. Instead, does piracy involve dishonest appropriation of someone else's property (virtual or otherwise)? Yes, usually. But, importantly, does piracy involve _permanently depriving_ that person of that same property? If merely taking a photo, recording sound, or copying some files, clearly not.

To me it seems that if theft were legally defined as merely the dishonest appropriation of someone else's property without their consent, piracy is theft. If as is typical, though, theft requires depriving the owner of that same property, piracy is clearly not theft.

I'm no lawyer, so what's the legal definition of theft in the US? In the UK, "permanent deprivation" is required and so piracy is certainly not "theft."

</comment><comment><USER14> I fully agree, and have yet to hear a solid argument in support of music piracy. Expanding your musical tastes and/or free marketing for the band are typically two very weak arguments, with the latter always unsubstantiated. If I copy your product and disseminate it to those clearly interested in it, I've definitely taken away some of your potential profits. You can argue that there are those whose interest didn't really compel them to purchase the product in the first place, so you're getting free marketing there in the hopes that they'll purchase future products, but let's be very realistic here, most pirates aren't spending more money on music because of their free access to music; they'll just occasionally donate to their favorite band. Of course, that's also a very unsubstantiated claim, but being human tells me that if I can get something for free with relative ease and little to no consequence, there's no reason to pay for it.

<comment><USER7> I have yet to hear a solid argument for 75-year "ownership" of a copyright.

I also view the ability to sell the copyrights themselves (patents, etc, etc) to a third-party as very distasteful -- as opposed to allowing someone to use your copyrighted item(s) for compensation -- as it seems very against the spirit of the law to give up your original right as the author.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _No one walking out of a Walmart with a stack of Richard Marx discs under > his arm would be subject to such penalties._

Penalties are higher because piracy is easier to get away with?

<comment><USER16> What does how easy something is to get away with have to do with anything? Technology makes certain kinds of securities fraud massively easier to get away with. Should we decriminalize them now?

<comment><USER17> I can't speak for username3, but the way I read his/her comment suggested the opposite. If a crime is very easy to get away with (like piracy), the penalties have to be higher to discourage people from doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is what's great about the Internet: Obama's opinion on how people use it doesn't matter.

"Piracy is bad."

OK, good luck shutting down that warez server in North Korea.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's funny how the word Piracy is used. One has to wonder what kind of pirates we are talking about.

The "Pirates of the Caribbean" type of pirates did loot ships, but what they stole where often goods produced by slavery and itself stolen from the colonies.

Piracy or as I prefer to call it – copying is the result of a disconnect between price and cost.

When you steal you take something away from others so it's not there anymore, but copying isn't stealing it's copying by using an internet connection you pay for yourself, onto a computer you have paid for yourself. In other words the only one who have any real cost is the one who copies.

There is absolutely nothing that states that it's fair for musicians or other artist to make millions by mass producing and distributing at almost zero cost.

And now that we are on the subject of newspeak anyway. If you produce an album with the purpose of selling it, you aren't really an artist anymore, you are a businessman and your product is a commodity.

Deal!

<comment><USER20> _There is absolutely nothing that states that it's fair for musicians or other artist to make millions by mass producing and distributing at almost zero cost._

Is it fair for software developers to make money by mass producing and distributing at almost zero cost?

<comment><USER21> > Is it fair for software developers to make money by mass producing and > distributing at almost zero cost?

Well, what about simple Econ 101? In a competitive market, prices tend towards the marginal cost of production. Wow! Someone just invented a technology that allows the duplication and distribution of recorded music to happen at almost zero cost!

Is it fair for the people whose livelihoods are changed by this new tech to lobby/pay for laws to maintain the price of their good at pre-new-tech levels? Is if fair for that new technology to be legally limited by highly unpopular, and un-democratically-created laws? Is it fair for me to be deprived of the use of that new technology for un-infringing uses?

And yes, I've taken advantage of the new technology to mass produce and distribute some of my own software are near zero-cost: <http://www.stratigery.com/acl.html> Have a copy, for free!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Printing money to give to bankers is also flat, unadulterated theft.

<comment><USER23> Pop quiz: Which administration passed TARP?

<comment><USER24> Bonus question: Which Senator who became a President voted for it?

(Cheet sheet: [http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_c...](http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00213))

<comment><USER23> Sigh. Lots of senators voted for it, because at that point in time, with everything falling down around our ears, it was the safest move, flaws and all. That particular situation was actually bad enough that a majority of Congress forgot about partisan silliness for a second. Unbelievable, I know. Last I knew, the overwhelming majority of the money had been paid back.

Anyways, score 1 point for you, you can take that one right on to Fox News.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> lobo-tuerto It would be interesting if they mentioned the proportion/amount of money that goes to songwriters/artists per song.

If they want that lead balloon to be a golden parachute, they can make it, just rising the percentage of the royalties they pay to the artist.

</comment><comment><USER25> ok, yes, but that is not the main point of the debate, though. What are the proper ways to deter and punish the crime? Up til now, the main weapon wielding by RIAA is to sue petty theft with gigantic financial penalties, which most people don't have the means to defend themselves against. It gets so bad that law firms are now basically blackmail people into submission, eg. "the Hurt Locker" case. This only infuriates others and aggravate the problems.

</comment><comment><USER26> Personally, I agree that piracy is wrong.

Users pirated software at my first startup company. It wasn't cool.

</comment><comment><USER27> Too bad Obama is only inclined to look forward as opposed to looking backward.

</comment><comment><USER28> The more draconian they try to get the more people of modest means will have little option but to adopt Creative Commons media and FOSS.

Home taping is killing music!

</comment><comment><USER29> Oh well, this is unfortunately expected. I'm not sure we'll ever see reasonable progress on this issue anytime soon.</comment>


Ask HN: Worst part of programming/dev. cycle - <AUTHOR>

What part of the writing a new app/program gives you the most grief? That is what is the hardest part for you to overcome? Does it depend on the size of the project? Are small projects hard to start but easy to finish? Large projects easy to start but hard to finish? I'm a young developer and find that getting started - the discovery process - is where I have to battle ennui. Things are still too abstract at this point and its easier for the mind to wander. But, once I get started writing code the process becomes much more enjoyable. <comment><USER2> I find the hardest part in any project is avoiding and getting rid of technical debt early on.

Technical debt, simply put, is the result of poor choices made due to the lack of understanding (mostly the business domain; including current and future requirements) at implementation time. "Gold plating", not validating or being able to validate assumptions early on and not following best practices are the major contributors of technical debt. (overdoing it and not knowing what you're doing)

Determining scope is essential to any project. Adding unnecessary layers (e.g. localization, internationalization, n-tier architectures, following patterns blindly such as CQRS, leaky abstractions), insufficient layers/abstractions and not validating important assumptions lead to dramatic increase in lead times.

Apart from learning from others' experiences, I found that being accountable to someone you can trust to provide you with advice and scrutinize your approach to be invaluable.

As you gain more experience you will start trusting your gut more in regards to technical and business decisions. The other party can't always provide you with correct, complete or sometimes any answers at all and they trust you to do what's best for them.

In regards to the discovery process, it's all about communication. Ask them to describe in a document what they want (functional requirements), what problems they are trying to solve and what constraints are in place. If it involves workflow, ask them to describe their workflow and distinguish different roles and responsibilities. This should at least open up some avenues of discussion to resolve ambiguity.

Once you have a good idea of what's going on, start to compartmentalize the different contexts and iterate over each. See: [http://www.productbreakdownstructure.com/](http://www.productbreakdownstructure.com/)

<comment><USER3> > I find the hardest part in any project is avoiding and getting rid of > technical debt early on.

If you have struggled with that, you will love inheriting and refactoring 10+ years of technical debt... on a shoestring... due tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Initial planning is hard, especially when working out scope with other parties.

Starting the code is hard, you either have to choose to be very careful in your original design or knowingly forfeit the code to future rewrites, both choices induce a certain amount of paralysis.

Then things get easy. Welcome to the flow inducing fun part.

Then the project is 95% done but you know massive amounts of effort will need to be expended buttoning this up. Knowing the abysmal ROI on this stage of the project tends to demotivate a lot of programmers. Its also the part of the project when most of the fun problems have been solved which demotivates even more programmers. This is where you identify who the finishers are (I'm not one) and man is it nice to have some finishers on your team, regardless of how little weight they carry through the first 3 phases.

I really only have experience with larger applications. In the few small projects I've worked on the first two phases were virtually non-existent since I, by default, have no problem throwing away something small.

Fortunately I really enjoy the first 3 phases. A lot of developers only like one or two... Welcome to the not so rosy world of getting things done.

</comment><comment><USER5> Two things:

1) Design: More specifically, the models. I almost _NEVER_ get my models right from the beginning. I don't know it's me or everybody, because you always start a program that will do ONE thing, then you decide to go modular. But _how much_ modular? So I sometimes end up kinda lost in this back and forth.

2) Writing tests. For a series of reasons feels more like losing time than anything else, just to be _like the cool kids_. Maybe I just don't get TDD enough. At least I'm getting accustomed with RSpec syntax, scopes and everything else (RSpec is a ruby testing framework).

Other than that, I have more project ideas than I can count!

</comment><comment><USER6> My biggest issue is deciding the scope of the project. In the beginning I have an idea and it seems possible. After a few days of planning I just turn it into some extremely complicated thing and just psych myself out of it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a hard time staying on task instead of reading HN all day. Focus, focus, focus, get stuff done.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I Open-Source my Startup? - <AUTHOR>

I've noticed I'm more motivated and effective as a developer when working on Open-Source projects and can share what I do with others. However, the project is going to be monetized through getting % of deals. So, I'm a little bit afraid of competitors who could use my code base to offer cheaper or even free service. Is the fear is justified?<p>P.S.: I've tried an approach of Open-Sourcing separate components. It increases the whole quality and maintainability. But it takes much more time to create everything in a universal enough to be reused form, to elaborate documentation for every independent component, etc. <comment><USER2> I've been thinking about open sourcing my source code as well. I've been trying to monetize a new mapping technique and I think there just isn't demand for it. So now I'm leaning toward open sourcing the mapping tech and trying to build a business the uses the maps to solve part of a larger problem (like real estate search, or business relocation).

My biggest fear would be one of the big mapping companies picking it up and taking credit for it. Though I'm sure this is unfounded and even if it happens at least people get to use it.

<comment><USER3> There is certainly a market for mapping data. I think the big part is being able to layer the data in a constructive way and having access to said data is probably the hard part.

But you have companies like Esri who make $1B/year on maps and yet most people have no idea who they are. (www.esri.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Marten Mickos had this to say: [http://www.heavybit.com/library/video/2013-10-15-marten- mick...](http://www.heavybit.com/library/video/2013-10-15-marten-mickos)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know that's not too informative. But I have to say it: his presentation is awesome.

<comment><USER4> It is, isn't it? Did it help you with your decision-making?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You will also need to ensure you don't (accidentally) violate anyone's algorithm/code-related patents.

</comment><comment><USER6> Use the AGPL, then at least you'll be able to take advantage of improvements your competitors make.</comment>